Bio Melt
Author: Carlton Mellick Iii
Date: 2015-10-03 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Horror
Description: Nobody goes into the Wire District anymore. The place is an industrial wasteland of poisonous gas clouds and lakes of toxic sludge. The machines are still running, the drone-operated factories are still spewing biochemical fumes over the city, but the place has lain abandoned for decades. When the area becomes flooded by a mysterious black ooze, six strangers find themselves trapped in the Wire District with no chance of escape or rescue. Banding together, they must find a way through the sea of bio-waste before the deadly atmosphere wipes them out. But there are dark things growing within the

ERASERHEAD PRESS

205 NE BRYANT

PORTLAND, OR 97211

WWW.ERASERHEADPRESS.COM

ISBN: 978-1-62105-207-4

Copyright © 2015 by Carlton Mellick III

Cover art copyright © 2015 by Ed Mironiuk
www.edmironiuk.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

Printed in the USA.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Do you remember Herman’s Head? You know, that sitcom from the 90s about the writer who had multiple people living inside of his head that made up his psyche? Well, I sometimes think I have different people inside of my head just like old Herman Brooks. But instead of Angel, Animal, Genius, and Wimp that made up Herman’s psyche, I have Buggy, Azumi, and Orc.

Buggy is a shy naïve child who just wants to stay alone in his room all day, playing with toys and daydreaming about strange imaginary worlds. He is my sensitivity, creativity, and apprehension. Without Buggy, I never would have had the desire to become a writer.

Azumi is a badass ninja chick who takes pleasure in using strategy and manipulation to overcome impossible obstacles. She is my confidence, intellect, and ambition. Without her, I never would have been able to succeed as a writer.

Then there is Orc—my favorite part of me. Orc is a morbidly obese drunken pirate who never takes anything seriously and is constantly reveling in his own stupidity. He is the reason I have these stupid giant mutton chops on my face. He is also my public persona and is the part of me I let out whenever I do readings and performances. I don’t know what he represents. I guess he’s my indulgence and sense of humor.

I wouldn’t have gotten far as a writer without all of these parts of me. They make me who I am. They inspire me. In fact, I tend to base many of the characters in my books around these three. Most of my female characters are based on Azumi, my male protagonists are usually based on Buggy, and Orc has inspired many ridiculous supporting characters—such as Shoji, the alcoholic sumo wrestler from I Knocked Up Satan’s Daughter, and Extreme Dean, the annoyingly enthusiastic frat boy from Clusterfuck.

When I wrote Bio Melt, I wondered what it would be like if people actually could combine to form one person. If dozens of people were to live their lives, grow up with different experiences, develop unique strengths and abilities, and then join together into a single being that was far greater than the sum of its parts. It would be terrifying to give up your life to join a greater whole, but it would result in a far superior society. Every single person could be a master painter, surgeon, mechanic, architect, soldier, actor, musician, programmer and philosopher all in one. We’d be a society of super people. This concept is explored throughout the book, though at its heart Bio Melt is a tribute to 80s toxic waste horror movies and Japanese cyberpunk manga. In other words, it was a really fun book to write.

—Carlton Mellick III 9/22/2015 8:54pm

PART ONE

SAMMY SMYTH

Wire District

I didn’t want to melt.

The idea of being dissolved and absorbed by another person plagued my nightmares ever since I was a child. To become a puddle of oily gray liquid, to be churned and buttered inside of black machines, to feed my nutrients to another human being in order to make someone better; I had always hoped I would figure out a way to avoid it. But there weren’t any other options left for me. If I wanted to have any kind of a future whatsoever I’d have to go through with the process. I would have to give myself up. I would have to combine.

The person I was to melt with was meeting me at a bond hotel in the Wire District. I didn’t like going into the Wire District. Nobody did. It was a toxic place. A death zone. So full of poisons and disease that you had to keep a gas mask with you at all times just in case a green toxic cloud blew your way. The area was mostly industrial, factories full of machines operated by other machines. Those few humans who worked in the area were required to wear hazmat suits so thick they looked like deep sea divers, and even then they were only in the vicinity for a few hours at a time.

It was called the Wire District due to the maze of subway-sized cables that ran through the streets, between factories, passing overhead like sprawling freeway systems. So many wires and pipelines spread across the landscape that it felt like I was driving through a massive circuit board. The place hummed with white noise both loud and quiet. Massive amounts of electricity pulsed through the area, so heavy it could almost be felt in the air, causing the hairs on my forearms to stand on end.

Driving through factory smoke, I tried to reach my destination as quickly as I could. The car windows were rolled up tight, the corners sealed with duct tape, goggles over my eyes, breathing through a wet scarf wrapped around my face. I was the only person on the road—if you could still call it a road with the asphalt in such disrepair that it crumbled into a trail of black gravel.

The closest semblance of life was the buzzing machinery all around me. The massive metal behemoths stared down at me like rusty golems, watching me as I drove past their hook-shaped toes. I had no idea what the machines were actually used for, or if they had a purpose at all. I’m not sure anyone knew, not even the people who constructed them.

“Turn left at Eight Hundred and Thirty-First Street,” said the electronic female GPS voice. But the street signs had all been rusted, torn down, or obstructed by giant cables, so I had no idea which road was which. The last thing I needed was to take a wrong turn and get lost. I tried to count the roads as I drove, but counting up from 772nd to 831st was not such an easy task.

The bond hotel was fifteen miles into the Wire District, which was at least fourteen and a half miles farther than I’d ever been before. Supposedly, there used to be dozens of bond hotels in the Wire District. It was where everyone went for joinings. This was decades ago, long before the chemicals and pollutants poisoned the air. Just like most of the offices, storefronts, and apartment buildings in the Wire, the bond hotels had long since been abandoned and left to rot. All of them except for one. I had no idea how dilapidated the hotel was going to be. The bond hotels in other parts of the city were nice, clean, luxurious facilities. They were also far more expensive than I could ever hope to afford. The one I headed toward was supposed to be the oldest, most rundown facility still in business. It was also the cheapest. Most people would rather never join at all than go through the process in such a ghetto bond hotel. But I didn’t care. As long as it got the job done, it would be fine by me.

The process of joining was invented over sixty years ago as a form of population control. Diseases and wars used to keep population levels at bay, but most countries had become so economically connected that war had become bad for business, and most terminal diseases had become curable. People lived longer. People could afford to have larger families. The population exploded just as natural resources became scarce. Something drastic had to be done.

The first time I learned about Compound People was when I was a child, and the concept terrified me. Two people melt into one. It sounded grotesque. Like Frankenstein.

I was six years old when I told my dad, “I want to be an artist when I grow up.”

My father, a perfectly fit man with perfectly combed hair, sat across from me at the table, eating fifteen ounces of twelve grain cereal, a slice of French ham, and half a cup of pineapple-apricot yogurt, taking each bite with the precision of a surgeon.

“You can’t be an artist when you grow up,” he responded, tapping his lips with a folded napkin.

I stabbed my spoon into a bowl of fruit loops, splashing milky multi-colored Os across the table.

With a pouting face I told him, “But my art teacher says I’m a good artist. I get E+ on every drawing.”

My father didn’t look at me when he spoke. He rarely ever looked at me during these kinds of discussions. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to have that kind of future.”

“Why not?”

“You have to learn a skill. A trade. Something that will make you a worthy candidate for absorption.”

“What is apsorshun?”

“Absorption is when two people are melted down and reformed into a new person called a Compound Person. The Compound Person takes the best attributes of each of the two and throws away the leftovers. It is how lesser human beings are able to better themselves and become contributing members of society.”

I stared at my father with a dumb look on my face. Back then, I often had a dumb look on my face whenever my father tried to speak to me.

“Remember when I brought home those three cars from the junkyard?” he asked.

I nodded my head.

“All three of them were broken down. They were useless. But I was able to take parts from all three cars and build one functional vehicle.”

“So broken down people are turned into working people?”

“Exactly.”

I ate my getting-soggy cereal one tiny bite at a time, staring at the pink milk in the bowl. In the tone of a sad puppy dog, I asked, “Am I a broken down person?”

My father sighed firmly. He didn’t like when my feelings were hurt. There was nothing that annoyed him more than an overly sensitive child.

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation. “You’re not good enough to go through life without combining with at least one other person.”

“But why?”

“You’re not smart enough. You’re not attractive enough. You’re lazy. You make excuses for all of your failures. You have too many bad habits.”

I kept my eyes focused on my cereal, trying with all my might not to cry. My father didn’t allow crying in our household.

“It’s for your own good. As you are, you wouldn’t be able to compete in a world full of Compound People.”

I couldn’t speak. If I said one more word I would break into tears and then my father would scold me.

“Don’t feel bad. Only the top three percent of your class will likely be able to go through life without needing to join. Almost everyone combines with at least one other person during their lives. I myself have gone through the process four times. I was once six different people before becoming a Compound Man.”

I was shocked to hear this. “You’re six different people?”

“Not exactly. I am just one person. I have only one consciousness. But I was created from the memories, knowledge, skills, and body parts of six different men. Not one of them was strong or smart enough to succeed on their own, but having given up their lives to join together they have created me—the top bio-engineer in my field.”

I looked at my father carefully. He didn’t seem like somebody who was made of six different people. I imagined he’d look like Frankenstein if he did.

“Which one is the real you?”

“I’m the real me. All six of the men who combined are equally me. Some might have been more useful to my career and physical appearance, some had lived longer lives before joining and take up a larger percentage of my memories, but not one of the six stand out as the prime component.”

“What about Mom? Is she a bunch of people put together?”

“No, she’s not Compound. Your mother didn’t want to join. She was afraid, like you.”

“Then I want to be like Mom.”

“Your mother is a woman. An attractive woman at that. The only reason she was able to avoid absorption was because all she ever wanted to be was a housewife. She didn’t need the superiority of a Compound to get a good job. She just had to find a Compound husband.” He finished off his breakfast and used the folded napkin to wipe his fingertips, one finger at a time. “But you’re a man. You need to provide for your family. You won’t be able to get a job, any job, without combining. It’s just how the world works now.”

“But what if I become a really good artist? What if I become the best artist in the whole world?”

“You won’t.”

“But how do you know?”

“You just won’t.”

“But why?”

My father stood from the table and walked across the kitchen to retrieve his keys, wallet, and laptop bag from the counter.

“Who is your favorite artist?” my father asked.

“That one on the television.”

“Artie Duvall?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Artie Duvall is a +7 Compound. That means he was once eight artists who combined together. And he’s not even considered a real artist in the art world. He’s kind of a joke. A television personality who teaches children and housewives how to paint kittens and landscapes in their free time. The greatest living artists are people like Sarkozi and Cho. They are real artists. And they are at least +50 Compounds. So even if you wanted to be an artist, you would still have to be absorbed. And because art, or any creative field, is so competitive you’d likely have to combine with far more people than if you chose a more practical career.”

I was way too young to hear the lecture my father was giving me. Had he waited a few years I might have been more receptive to the idea. But being such a young boy who’d been spoiled with love and attention by both my mother and my teachers at school, who always encouraged my drawings and finger paintings, I just had to have my way.

“I want to be an artist no matter what,” I yelled at my father as he opened the front door.

My father just shook his head at me. As he closed the door behind him, he said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody will want to join with an artist.”

I probably should have listened to my father that day, because I spent the majority of my life fighting to be an artist. I worked hard every day, practicing my craft, drawing about twenty images a week. Soon it wasn’t just my father who urged against focusing on art, but my mother did as well.

“You’ll never make it as an artist, Sweetie,” she would say, kissing my forehead. “It’s just not for you.”

Then my teachers urged me against art.

“You should focus on your other subjects. They will be more valuable to you later in life.”

And even my grandparent was against it.

“Art is for losers. You don’t want to be a loser, do you?”

I didn’t really like my grandparent. He was a Compound Man, like my father, but he was only twenty-six. This was because my grandparents had been absorbed into a much younger person. My grandfather, the one on my mom’s side, was dying and so he combined with my grandmother, creating a new Compound Grandma. But once Compound Grandma’s heart started to weaken, she combined with a much younger man. This man had then become my grandparent, and he was kind of a jerk. I liked my grandparents much better when they were old and separate.

I never met my grandparents on my father’s side, even though there were twelve of them. It was uncommon for children to have a very close relationship with their parents after they are joined, because they become such different people. A mother’s child no longer seems much like her child once they’ve been melted into a group of other people’s children.

“If you keep insisting on doing art,” said the young grandparent, “you’ll end up homeless or forced to be a criminal. Do you know what happens to criminals?”

I shook my head.

My grandparent said, “Criminals are forced to combine with other criminals, so that their numbers will be more manageable, so the prisons won’t overflow. You’ll be forced to join with thieves and rapists and murderers. Then your life will be over. Nobody will ever want to combine with a Compound Ex-Con.”

But no matter what my parents or grandparents or teachers said, I refused to give in. I still wanted to be an artist. But the older I got, the more difficult I realized success would be to attain. The Compound Artists I studied in art history class in college were so much more talented than I could ever hope to become. They were masters. It would take me ten lifetimes to develop the skills these artists possessed. Twenty lifetimes. This was why only Compound Artists could succeed in the art world. They did have twenty or more lifetimes of experience more than I ever would.

Not only that, but the value of art often depended on how many people the artist had combined with. Paintings by a +30 artist would usually sell for more than that of a +10. And paintings by an unjoined artist such as myself would be practically worthless. As an unjoined, I might as well have been a four-year-old trying to sell a finger painting to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The only way my art could have any value at all would be if I someday joined with a successful +50 artist. Art historians often collected the pre-absorption work of master artists.

By the time I was old enough to realize my father was right it was already too late. The top art graduates in my university were combined together, depending on style and medium. The two-hundred art majors were melted down to only 16 artists. Many of them were +10s and +15s. One of them was even a +20. Only two students remained unjoined. I was one of them, because I refused to join. And the other couldn’t join due to mental illness. A history of mental illness could spoil an entire Compound Person, so these candidates were almost always rejected. The girl killed herself two months later. Without being able to combine, she figured there was no future for her as an artist.

After graduation, I spoke to the girl. Her name was Kammy. She looked drained and sickly. At first I thought she was like me, a stubborn individualist. But when I told her my reasons for not joining, she looked at me with such venom that I had to take a few steps back. Hearing that I purposely rejected joining angered her even more than when she was told she could not be joined.

“You’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever known,” she told me.

And she was right. I was an idiot. The biggest idiot in the world.

Once I matured and was finally willing to submit to absorption, it was too late. No other artists would take me. Nobody wanted to bother melting with an unjoined. +10 Compound Artists, once they’d improved their skills or made a name for themselves, would seek out other +10 Compound Artists to join with. I’d missed my chance. I was stuck as myself.

My father was incredibly disappointed in me when I rejected the graduation joining. The only reason he allowed me to pursue art was because he assumed I would join a large collective. He figured even I wasn’t dumb enough to actually try to enter the art industry as an unjoined. From that moment on, I was dead to him. He didn’t want anything to do with me.

“Nobody will ever want to join with you now,” he said, as he packed my bags for me. “If you can’t join with other artists your art skills are useless. And nobody else will want to join with you if your only primary skill is painting. You’ll just become a burden on society.”

“Dad…”

He wouldn’t listen to my excuses. “And I’ll be damned if I let you become a burden on me.”

As I drove to the bond hotel, I thought about those last words my father said to me. I hated him for it for years after he kicked me out of the house. But not long after living on my own in the real world for a while, working less-than-minimum wage jobs alongside the other useless unjoined citizens of the city, I realized he was completely right to say the things he said. I would become a burden on society with only my unjoined art skills going for me. The world is no longer a place for individualists.

But I wasn’t necessarily a lost cause. Unlike the art girl, Kammy, I could still combine with another human being. I could still have a future as a Compound Man. I didn’t have to kill myself. I didn’t have to wait for the inevitability of machines replacing the only jobs I was qualified to do.

So I decided I would become Compound like my father. Unfortunately, finding a joining partner wasn’t so easy at my age, with my lack of skillsets, with such a small amount of life experience. In other words, I had nothing to bring to the table.

It took me years of sending out my profile to matchmaking websites before I finally received a match. Her name was Jupiter Minneau. My father told me never to join with a woman. He said it confuses your sexuality. Whether you become a woman or stay a man, the new you will have issues with sexual identity. But I didn’t have any other options and Jupiter was willing to go through with the procedure. As they say, beggars can’t be choosers.

Besides, people were becoming far more open to inter-gender or inter-racial joinings than they were in my father’s day. These kinds of unions were becoming more and more common. Someday, it would likely become the norm.

Deep in the bowels of the Wire District, the streets became darker, dirtier, and more toxic. The roads grew thick with green smog and the fizzing sound of electricity was almost like music emanating from the massive cables and surrounding factories. I debated on whether or not to use my gas mask. It was the only one I had and the filter on it wasn’t going to last very long. I had to keep it in case of emergency, in case the toxin levels became lethal. My vehicle was an old one, a very old one that was rarely seen on the roads anymore, but it was still new enough to come with a toxin meter. If the meter still worked the gas outside was not yet fatal. But it was plenty strong enough to make me nauseous and give me a drilling headache. I decided to risk it and save the gas mask for when I got there. For all I knew, the bond hotel could have been right in the middle of a lethal gas cloud and I’d need the filter as fresh as possible to endure that.

My car splashed into a pool of black ink. I had no idea what the fluid was. It was too syrupy to be rain water, too dark. I assumed it was some kind of chemical runoff from the factories. Maybe some kind of fuel spilled from the back of a tanker truck.

The black liquid bubbled up from the ground like oil or ancient sewage. At first, it was just a puddle, but the black ooze deepened the farther up the road I drove. It was like I was driving through a lake of squid ink.

“Your destination is on your right,” said the electronic GPS voice.

I could see the bond hotel up ahead. Its neon lights flickered and hummed. Its roadside sign so crumbled and rotten, the name of the place could no longer be read. At first, the hotel felt like the only piece of real civilization within the miles of machinery and toxic waste. An oasis. A safe haven. But the closer I got, the less alive it felt. The place was dead, haunted. There were no cars in the parking lot. No signs of life. I wondered if the bonding rooms were even functional.

Luckily, the hotel was positioned at a much higher elevation than the street. The parking lot was up an incline, so I wouldn’t have to step into the black fluid as I got out of my car. The last thing I wanted to do was wade through some kind of toxic sludge that would poison my system and make me incompatible for joining with Jupiter, or anyone ever again.

When I parked the car, I looked around for my joining partner. She didn’t seem to have arrived yet. Nobody seemed to be there at all. I checked the toxin meter before I left the car. It was still high, but not harmful. Being a few blocks away from the nearest factory meant the pollutants weren’t so bad. I supposed if the air was of lethal toxicity then this bond hotel would probably have already been condemned.

“Hello?” I called out to the building as I exited my vehicle. “Jupiter Minneau?”

There was no response from the hotel. The place was deserted. She wasn’t there yet.

I went back into the car, grabbed my gas mask, my computer, and a book just in case I got bored waiting for her. Then I climbed the steps leading up to the second floor. I’d never been to a bond hotel before. It looked exactly like an old roadside motel. Four stories of rooms, water-damaged walls, warped balconies that looked ready to collapse under my weight. With every step I took, the cement walkway on the second floor rumbled and shook, the metal handrail squealing at me. The whole place definitely seemed abandoned. It couldn’t possibly have still been in business. I had to have gone to the wrong place.

Many of the hotel room doors were boarded up, no longer in working order. Though, strangely, two of the rooms read Occupied. I had no idea how there could be occupants in the rooms. There were no lights or sounds coming from the door. The occupied rooms were just as dead as the vacant ones. It must have been some kind of malfunction.

It was difficult to make out through the chipped paint, but a sign painted on the wall read Waiting Room with an arrow pointing forward. I followed the direction until I arrived at a cracked glass door. An automatic light flipped on as I stepped within, creating a static buzzing sound that tensed my ears high up the sides of my head. The place was a mess: graffiti spray-painted across the walls, the couches torn up and infested with silverfish, the floor covered in white plaster that crumbled from the ceiling, empty beer cans everywhere.

Obviously, teenagers had once used this place as a hangout. It wasn’t recently. This was long ago. The thick dust coating everything was at least six years old. When I saw the state of the place, I realized two things: 1) this place hadn’t had any form of security in over a decade, and 2) there was no janitor or maid service. Like many businesses, everything was automated. You paid for the room by kiosk. You checked yourself in and checked yourself out. There was no need for staff of any kind.

I wondered if anyone knew this bond hotel was even open. The owner could have died ages ago. The city might have thought they’d shut it down like the other bond hotels in the area. But perhaps they forgot about this one. Perhaps nobody knew it was still functional or that matchmaking sites were still forwarding customers its way. Perhaps it was a very bad idea for me to be there.

I stepped carefully across the waiting room floor, trying not to kick up a dust cloud. I found the cleanest section of couch I could find, wiped it down, and took a seat. For ten minutes, I sat wondering what the hell I was doing there. The loud buzzing lights pierced into me, tensing my eardrums tighter by the minute. I felt like I was the last man on Earth, a lone survivor living in a toxic post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The place was haunted, that was for sure. A lot of people had died in the Wire District over the years, especially vagrants who thought they could move into the many abandoned apartment buildings in the area only to find the toxins unsurvivable. This place was their burial ground. Their ghost town.

I wondered if I was supposed to be there at all. I wondered if the matching between Jupiter and I was a complete mistake. Perhaps it was an error in the system. Perhaps Jupiter’s profile was sent in decades ago, back when bond hotels in the Wire District were actually still used. The system set me up with a long-dead woman in a long-abandoned hotel. I didn’t want to believe this theory, but it seemed a lot more likely than a hotel still being in business in this decrepit condition.

If I were smart I would have just left right then and there. But, as my father always told me, doing the smart thing wasn’t in my character.

Bond Hotel

I played video games on my computer for an hour until the battery died, then went outside to look around. There was no sign of any other human being. No other cars had driven down the road but mine. No other movement but my shadow against the hotel walls.

“Maybe she changed her mind,” I said to the buzzing lights.

I didn’t blame her. Had I known this place was in the condition it was in I never would have come, either.

I looked out of the waiting room, down at the street below. There were no signs of any cars coming. “Well, I guess that’s that. I guess I’m stuck being unjoined Sammy forever.”

The whole building rumbled as I walked down the staircase toward the parking lot. Before I got to my car, a noise stopped me in my tracks. The sound of a door creaking open. I looked up at the hotel. It wasn’t a door on the first or second floor. It must have been on the third. Who was it? Did it open on its own?

“Hello?” I called up.

There was no answer.

I went back up the steps. Once I made it to the second floor, a voice called overhead.

“Are you Sammy?”

I looked up.

A woman wearing a robe and a gas mask looked down at me.

“Are you Jupiter?”

She nodded. “You’re late.”

Her voice was muffled and strange as she spoke through the mask. I wasn’t entirely convinced that she wasn’t still a ghost.

“I’ve been in the waiting room for over an hour. I thought you weren’t going to show.”

She just stared at me blankly. “You were supposed to meet me in room 306.”

I couldn’t tell what she looked like in that baggy robe and mask. She seemed drowsy or drunk, leaning against the railing like she couldn’t hold herself straight otherwise.

“306? This is the first I heard of that.”

“Didn’t you get my email?”

“No. What email?”

She shook her head. “Just get up here. It’s not safe outside.”

As I entered the hotel room, the woman closed the door behind me and removed the gas mask.

“The air’s safer in here,” she said.

She seemed too shy to look me in the eyes, but I got a good look at her from the side. Her hair was frizzy and curled, and deep cherry red. Her skin pale and pasty. A cute collection of freckles on the top of her nose. I was immediately attracted to her, but tried to pretend I wasn’t. It seemed odd to be attracted to a person I was about to become. Every thought I’d have about her would soon be shared with her.

“You’re uglier than I thought you’d be,” she told me.

That threw me off. I didn’t know what else to do but apologize for being ugly. “I’m sorry… Is that a problem?”

She rubbed her hands through her frizzy red hair like she was scratching at lice.

“Only if you make me ugly once we join,” she said. Then she stepped away from me.

I set down my belongings and removed my coat that reeked of Wire District gasses.

The inside of the hotel room was much nicer than the outside, but not by much. The room was self-cleaning, but most of the cleaning drones were older than the antique furniture. The room was split into three sections: a meet-and-greet lounge, the pre-staging area filled with monitors and testing equipment, and the actual bonding machine was in the back.

As I scanned the equipment, trying to decide whether or not it was actually safe to use, I said, “I wasn’t expecting such honest criticism.”

She shrugged. “Why not? We’re about to become one person. You’ll know what I think about you one way or another.”

I nodded. “Fair enough. Do you want to know what I think of you?”

“Not particularly,” she said.

She probably thought that I was going to call her a bitch, but I was actually going to tell her that I thought she was beautiful. She wasn’t movie star pretty, but she had kind of an Annie meets Mad Max look going for her that I liked.

“By the way, how did you get here?” I asked the frizzy-haired girl. “There weren’t any other cars in the parking lot but mine.”

She sat down on the couch and shrugged.

There seemed to be something off about the girl, and it wasn’t just her aggressive personality. She also seemed twitchy, distant. Not nervous, exactly. She was relaxed, far more relaxed than I was, but she was also irritable and preoccupied. Perhaps she was drunk or on some kind of mood-stabilizing drug.

She sat there rubbing her bare knees for a few minutes, staring at me only in the corners of her eyes. Her silence made me feel even more awkward than I was in the waiting room.

I didn’t know what else to do but ask her questions.

“Have you ever done this before?” I asked.

She looked up at me, then looked away. Her robe slipped open, but she didn’t do anything to correct it. “What do you think?” Her tone had such force that I had to take two steps back. “My online profile said this is my first time.”

I didn’t know why I asked that question. I knew the answer. I’d read her profile thirty-five times before I got there.

“Are you scared?” I asked.

She looked at me like I asked her the most annoying question I possibly could have asked. “No? Are you?”

“Definitely.” I looked back at the machines. “Not just because I never joined before, but those machines don’t look exactly safe. I wonder if they even work.”

“They better work,” she said.

The freckle-nosed girl grabbed a bamboo purse from the floor and dropped it in her lap. Then she pulled out a pint-sized bottle of cherry brandy and took a swig.

“Are you sure you should be drinking before this?”

She took an even larger swig, then passed me the bottle. “Want some?”

I shook my head. “No thanks.”

She forced it into my hand. “Just drink. I still want to have a buzz by the time we’re joined together. That means we both have to drink.”

I smiled at her logic and took a few small sips of the acidic liquor.

“So your name’s Jupiter? Where did that come from?”

She sighed. Obviously, she thought questions were pointless since our memories were about to be combined. But she humored me. She knew this wasn’t a procedure that people just jumped right into without hesitation.

“My parents weren’t hippies, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“No, I wasn’t getting at that at all.”

“They were space people,” Jupiter said. “NASA geeks. They named all of their children after planets.”

“You didn’t have a brother named Uranus did you?”

“No, Uranus was the dog. My other siblings were Mars, Venus, and Pluto. You’re going to probably regret joining with me once you share the memories of my childhood. I had the absolute worst parents.”

“Were they abusive?”

She laughed and shook her head. “No, they were just dorks. The biggest dorks you’ll ever meet.”

“They were probably more fun than my parents were.”

“Maybe they thought they were fun. I thought they were embarrassing. You know how they always say that nerds and jocks are the best combination for a joining? If you mix the confidence, good looks, physical prowess, and social skills of a jock with the intelligence and mental capabilities of a nerd you’re supposed to get the perfect Compound, right? Well, in my parents’ case they were just turned into attractive, physically fit nerds. Their geeky personalities didn’t go away.”

She laughed again, this time with her mouth wide open. It was good to see her in a better mood. Perhaps it was the cherry brandy.

Jupiter had a large mouth. And her teeth were even larger, causing the skin above her lips to protrude and appear puffy. I once heard that people with large mouths were considered less evolved than those with small mouths. I didn’t know if that was true, but I always liked large mouths on girls. Maybe because it meant they had bigger smiles. Or maybe because I liked girls who were the opposite of my mother, who had the tiniest mouth of anyone I ever knew.

I pulled up an old chair and sat down across from the red-haired woman. The chair was so rickety that it felt like it was going to break into splinters beneath me if I put too much weight on it. I examined Jupiter carefully as she sat there. It was surreal to think our bodies would join together as one.

“I have something I want to ask you,” I said. “I’m just curious. Why did you agree to join with me? I’d been sending out my profile for ages, but nobody was ever interested. I never even got a meeting. Because I’m only an artist, I don’t really have much to offer.”

She laughed. “Tell me about it. You seemed absolutely pathetic based on your profile.”

I nodded, forced a smile to show I wasn’t offended by the comment. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. I made a lot of mistakes when I was young. I was scared of melting. I thought I could still succeed as an unjoined.”

She nodded. “So you had an ego.”

I shook my head. “I was an individualist.”

“You thought you were special. Too good for joining.”

I looked away, then nodded. She was right. Being someone special meant everything to me.

“Well, I thought I was too good as well,” she said.

“You didn’t want to join?”

“I didn’t think anyone else was good enough to melt with me. They were either too ugly or too stupid or too boring. I only wanted to join with somebody who would make me better in every way. But the only people who met my standards didn’t think I was good enough for them.”

“Why’s that? Your profile was pretty impressive. You’re attractive. Healthy. In good shape. Smart. You have degrees in physics and engineering. You speak five different languages.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I know. My parents made sure I’d be a prime candidate for absorption. But I have one flaw that got me rejected time after time.”

“What flaw was that?”

She opened her arms, widening the flaps of her robe to reveal more skin than I was comfortable seeing. “What do you think?”

The skin of her belly and thighs was even whiter than her face. Blue veins rippled through her flesh. Parts of her body were red and splotchy, reacting to the muggy Wire District atmosphere.

“Your behavior?” I asked.

At first, I thought she would be offended by my comment, but it only made her smile—a smile so big it covered the whole lower half of her face.

“Bingo.” Then she pointed at me with a long, curled fingernail. “I’ve gone to dozens of bond hotels with people, but they’ve never gone well. My personality tends to turn people off.”

“You seem a little abrasive, but you don’t seem that bad to me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Please… I’m more than just a little abrasive. I’m a complete and total bitch. I’m self-centered, stuck-up, offensive. I expect everyone to treat me like royalty even when I treat everyone else like shit.”

I wasn’t buying it. “A self-centered bitch wouldn’t be able to conduct that kind of self-analysis. You’re obviously a better person than that.”

She nodded at me.

“That,” she said, pointing. “That right there.”

“What?”

“You wanted to know why I’m joining with you. That’s the reason.”

I didn’t understand.

“You’re a nice guy,” she said. “You’re modest. You’re sensitive. You’re considerate, humble and polite. You’re even naïve. That’s the complete opposite of me. If we join together you’ll mellow out the bitch side of me. You’ll make me—I mean us—more worthy for our next joining. Together, we’ll be able to get somebody really useful to melt with us. Somebody who will ensure we have a successful future.”

“That’s it?” I ask. “You only chose me because I’m a nice guy?”

“Well… yeah. You don’t have anything else going for you.”

“I’m a pretty good artist.”

“Yeah, I guess that will come in handy once we need a hobby for when we retire in our old age.”

“There’s a lot of uses for artistic talent,” I said. “Creativity, imagination, spatial mathematics. Anyone can benefit from these attributes. I never understood why people are so against joining with artists or creative types.”

“It’s not because art is a useless skill. I understand that it’s not. The problem is romanticism. Most artists are idealists, not realists. Most artists think too highly of their work. They tend to be perfectionists. They are more likely to make excuses for their failures. If you create a work of art that nobody else likes, you can just say that nobody understands you, nobody gets you. Artists are typically sensitive, thin-skinned flowers who constantly require praise and attention. It’s a weakness that most people don’t want to deal with. Lucky for you, I could use a bit of sensitivity to make me a more well-rounded person. As they say, opposites make the best joinings.”

After she finished, I stared down at my hands. I wanted to argue against what she said, but I didn’t have much of a rebuttal. I always believed creativity, even sensitivity, was a strength, but I understood that it wasn’t a popular belief among joiners.

“So should we get started?” Jupiter asked me. “I don’t want to be in the Wire District any longer than I have to.”

I knew what she meant about wanting to get out of the Wire, but I was still hesitant. This was the kind of thing you don’t want to rush into.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Not yet?”

“I’m not ready.”

“Stop being such a pussy.” She handed me her bottle of cherry brandy. “Chug this. Liquid courage.”

“I just don’t want to rush it.” I took the bottle and unscrewed the cap. “Once we do this, I’ll be dead. Sammy Smyth will no longer exist. I can’t just jump into doing something like that. Committing suicide isn’t easy.”

She groaned at me.

“Don’t be so melodramatic. You’ll still be you. Everything good about you will still continue on. It’ll just be added to a greater whole. Don’t think of it as losing. Think of it as gaining.”

“Are you sure you haven’t already joined before? You speak like somebody who’s gone through this many times before.”

“No, I’ve not gone through it. But I’ve been prepared to go through it dozens of times before. I’ve been here, gone through all this, so many times. I’ve been nervous, scared, excited, and any other emotion a person could go through pre-joining. But the person always wimps out before we do it. Every time, they changed their mind. Now I’m just apathetic about the whole thing. I just want to get it over with.”

I took another sip. “It’s weird though. Thinking about it. After it’s all over, I’ll never be me again. I’ll be a we, we’ll be an I.”

“It won’t seem weird at all, after it’s over. When we’re one person, it will feel natural. We’ll feel exactly as we’re supposed to. Only we’ll be better than we were when we were apart.”

“But what if we’re not better? What if it makes us worse?”

“That doesn’t happen.”

“Yes, it does. It happened to my mother.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mother was an unjoined most of her life. She was just a housewife, married to my successful +5 Compound father. But when I was a teenager, she decided to join. Well, she didn’t decide. My father decided for her. She was getting older, her looks were beginning to fade. So my dad convinced her to join with a much younger woman. A woman he picked out for her.”

“Your father wanted to trade in his old wife for a new and improved model?”

“Exactly.”

“So? People do that all the time.”

“Yeah, but the woman she became was wretched. After the joining, she wasn’t my mother anymore. She was this younger, self-absorbed, other woman.”

“But she was still your mother.”

“No, she wasn’t. I would have been able to accept her if she just looked different, or her personality changed just a little, or she became smarter. But the problem was that she didn’t love me anymore after the joining. She had memories of loving me. She knew everything there was to know about me. But she was combined with this other woman who hated children, who focused more on the bad memories than the good, who felt like the joining forced her to raise somebody else’s kid. Where my old mother accepted me for my flaws, my new mother didn’t have the time or patience. It was like she died that day. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always resisted the idea of joining. I knew that I would lose everything I loved.”

Jupiter looked down, her expression softened, depressed. I didn’t think she felt sorry for me. I think she felt sorry for herself, because my sad memories would soon be hers.

“So what should our name be?” Jupiter asked. The bottle of cherry brandy on the couch was almost empty.

I shrugged. I never thought of choosing a name before.

“I don’t know. Do we get to choose ourselves? I thought it was automated.”

“Of course it’s not automated.” She went toward the computers and clicked on the welcome menu. “We have to decide before we join.”

“What about gender?” I asked. “Do we get to choose gender?”

I’d only known men who joined with other men, and women with other women. I had no idea what it was like for a male/female melt.

“Yeah, we choose gender,” she said. “I think we should be male. Definitely male.”

“Why male?”

“Why not?” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see what it would be like to be a man.”

“You’ll know either way. Once we’re joined, you’ll have my memories of being a man.”

“So you want to be a woman?”

I looked down. “No… That would be… weird. I’d prefer to stay male if possible. But I’m surprised you want to be a man. I assumed you would have been insistent on the gender.”

“I am insistent. I want to be a man. For starters, I never wanted to have a baby. Pregnancy scares the hell out of me. And secondly, there are still way too many sexist idiots in the world. If we’re male we’ll have an advantage in the workplace.”

“But won’t it mess with our sexual identity? With you being female, won’t you make us desire men?”

“I’m more into girls than guys,” she said.

“You’re bisexual?”

She shook her head. “I’m attracted to women, but I’ve never had sex with a woman before. I don’t think it will be difficult to make the adjustment to male. My dad always thought I was more of a tomboy than a girly girl.”

“So you’re not attracted to guys?”

“I’m into guys, sure. But will I be into guys once I’m a man? Probably not. Are you worried you’ll end up having a lot of gay sex after we join?”

I shrugged.

“Well, even if that were the case, there’s no turning back now,” she said. “I’ve had too many people change their minds on me before. I’ll be damned if I let you chicken out.”

Jupiter ran her ID through the card reader on the computer. Her matchmaking profile was pulled up on the screen. She then slid her debit card through the slot and paid her fee for the binding service.

“I just paid six thousand dollars for this procedure and it’s non-refundable.” She looked over at me. “Don’t leave me hanging.”

I went to her and slid my ID and debit card through the machine.

“How much money do you have?” she asked.

“Enough.”

“Enough what?”

“Enough for this procedure.”

“No, I mean the total of your account balance. I want to know how much money we’ll have once we’re joined.”

“I don’t know. Maybe a few hundred dollars.”

“Are you serious? We’re going to be that broke?”

“Don’t you have any money?”

“I have some. More than that.”

“I didn’t even think about money.”

“We need to create a new bank account under our new name. Our old accounts will be merged into the new one. We’ll also need a new driver’s license, a new debit card, a new birth certificate.”

“Birth certificate?”

“Yeah, we create it now. The others will be issued after the joining.”

I watched over Jupiter’s shoulder as she filled out our new birth certificate. She typed in our new birthday, which was today.

“So we’ll be celebrating our birthday on November 2nd then?” I asked. “I don’t know why, but that seems like a weird birthday. What does that make us? Scorpio? I never saw myself becoming a Scorpio. What sign are you now?”

“Taurus,” Jupiter said.

“I’m a Cancer.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s all bullshit anyway.”

“I wonder what it will be like being a Scorpio…”

She shoved me back once I leaned too close to the screen.

“Go take off your clothes. Put the robe on.” She pointed at the musty old robe on the hook in the corner of the room.

“Is there anywhere private I can change?”

She gave me a dirty look when I asked the question.

“Who cares if I see you naked? We’re about to melt our bodies together. We’re about to become one person. Are you embarrassed to look at yourself naked in the mirror?”

“A little.”

She shook her head and continued typing. “You better not turn me into a pansy.”

I did as she asked. In the corner of the room, I removed my shirt and pants, then pulled on the stiff, scratchy old robe that was too small to close all the way in the front. Jupiter watched me change in the reflection of the computer monitor, pretending she wasn’t paying attention. The look on her face was not one of disgust, nor pleasant surprise. Just one of satisfied curiosity.

“So how old are we going to be?” I asked.

“You always become the age of the youngest joiner,” Jupiter said. “Since I’m a year younger than you, we’ll be twenty-three.”

I tried covering my privates hanging through the flaps of the too-small robe, watching her fill out our new birth certificate. She was in the gender section.

“Damn it…” she said, repeatedly clicking on male.

“What?” I leaned in closer to the computer screen.

She continued clicking male but it wouldn’t select.

“The software is messed up,” she said. “It won’t let me select male.”

I looked closely. The male button was not highlighted, as though it wasn’t a selectable option. At the bottom of the screen in tiny red text it read gender full.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the red text.

“Gender full?” Jupiter yelled. “What the hell does that mean?”

“We can’t be male?”

Jupiter stubbornly clicked at the button over and over again. “They can’t do this. I want to be a guy.”

“Is there a limit to how many people can choose a certain gender?”

Jupiter spit at the screen and threw all of her weight against the back of the chair.

“It’s a stupid failsafe,” she said. “If too many people choose the same gender in a year they put a freeze on one of them until it all evens out. They do this so that human choices don’t throw off the male-female ratio too much.”

“So more people choose male than female?”

“It appears that way, at least this year. If we were both men or both top candidates for absorption then we might have gotten our way. But since we’re already different genders and are bottom-feeder candidates, they’ve taken our choice away. We’ll have to be a woman.”

She clicked the female button and went on to the next page.

“Wait!” I grabbed her by the shoulder. “What do you mean we don’t have a choice?”

I suddenly realized that I didn’t want to be a woman. Although I already knew it was a possibility that I could end up female, especially when I was to be joined with a woman, the reality of switching genders sent me into a panic.

“We’re supposed to be male. You even said that we’re going to be male.”

Although there was a part of me deep down that was curious about what it would be like to change genders, the reality of becoming a woman scared the shit out of me. Would I start having sex with guys? Would I have to marry a guy? Would I get pregnant and have children? Would I have to endure the pains of childbirth? I’d have to start buying tampons. I’d have to pee sitting down. I’d have to shave my legs and armpits. I’d have to take better care of my appearance. That all seemed like way too much of a pain in the ass.

“I can’t be a woman,” I said, my voice in a high-pitched panic. “I don’t know anything about being a woman. I don’t even know how to put on makeup!”

“Relax, dipshit. I’ve been a woman my whole life. I’ve got us covered.”

“Maybe we should hold off,” I said. “Maybe we should wait until next year, once there’s no longer a surplus of male Compounds.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jupiter shook her head. “Hell no. I’m not waiting. We’re doing this. Besides, you might like being a woman. You never know…”

I shook my head. “No way. There’s no way I’ll like it as a woman. It’s too much work.”

Jupiter laughed at me and continued filling out the form. She didn’t care what I had to say in dispute. She even seemed to enjoy my anguish over being forced to become female.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’ll see it my way once we’re joined. And if we still want to be male after joining we can just switch genders on our next melt.”

As she proceeded to fill out the form, I looked at the door and considered bolting. It wasn’t too late. I’d lose $6,000 but at least I would still be me. I’d get to continue having a penis. I’d get to keep all the small perks of being male, like getting away with not having to change my underwear for over a week.

“So what should our new name be?” Jupiter asked.

I didn’t care about the name. I just wanted to leave. “I don’t know.”

“How does Viola sound?” she asked.

I stepped back toward my clothes. “Viola? Why Viola?”

“I kind of like that name.”

I casually grabbed my clothes, trying to be quiet and discreet. “I don’t like it. What about Laura?”

“I don’t want a normal name. Let’s go with something unique, like Malice or Xavia or Hex.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to be Hex.”

“Well, give me some names you like.” Jupiter turned around in her seat to look at me, and saw me pulling my pants up. Her expression turned to full-on bitch mode. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Nothing…”

“You better not be trying to sneak out of here.” She stood up and blocked my path to the door. “I swear to God I’ll kill you if you don’t melt with me.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to handle becoming a woman.”

Jupiter huffed. “You’re such a pussy already.” She stomped across the room, tore my clothes out of my hands, and went back to the computer. “You’ll make a better woman than you do a man.”

I didn’t know what to do after she took my clothes. My car keys were in the pants pocket. There was no way I was going to escape the Wire District without a car, and there was no way I was going to try to wrestle my pants out of Jupiter’s hands. She didn’t look that tough, but for some reason I was pretty sure she’d be able to take me in a fight. I wasn’t going to risk it.

“I’m naming us Hydra,” she said. “Got any objection to that?”

“Hydra? Are you serious?”

“You have one second to change my mind.”

“What about the last name?”

“We can either go with one of ours, a combination of both, or make up something new. I think we should make up something new.”

“Like what?”

“Hyuna,” she said. “Hydra Hyuna.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s a terrible name.”

She typed it in anyway and clicked enter. “Too late. That’s who we’re going to be.”

“We’re joining together so that we’ll have a better future,” I said. “Nobody will ever take us seriously with a name like that. Would you hire somebody with that name?”

“Hell yeah I would. She sounds like a tough bitch who doesn’t take shit from anybody.”

This Jupiter girl was really starting to seem like a terrible person to join with. I might have been better off staying Sammy for the rest of my life.

I shook my head. “She sounds like an anime character.”

As Jupiter opened up a bank account for Hydra Hyuna, emptying both of our accounts into it, I peeked out of the window to check on the Wire District atmosphere. There were some green gas clouds hovering in an empty lot two blocks down, but they didn’t seem to be moving in our direction. However, the black fluid in the streets appeared to be deeper. It was almost as high as the parking lot. Perhaps ten feet deep. I had no idea how we were going to drive out of there after our joining.

“I just thought of something…” I said. “Whose car are we going to take home after this?”

“Huh?” Jupiter was too involved in the paperwork to pay attention to me.

“We arrived separately, two people in two cars. When we leave we’ll only be one person. Which car should we take?”

Jupiter shrugged. “Yours.”

“Why mine? It’s a piece of shit.”

“I didn’t drive here. I don’t have a car.”

“You didn’t drive? How’d you get here then? There’s no way you walked.”

“I took a cab,” she said.

“A cab? What kind of cab driver would agree to go through the Wire District?”

“An automated one. It was a self-driving cab. No driver needed.”

I nodded. Auto-Cabs were a new invention I heard about on the news a couple years ago. They said eventually all public transportation would be automated. Trains, garbage trucks, street sweepers, and subways were already driven by computer. Auto-Cabs were to come next, but I didn’t realize they were already a thing.

As I looked out the window, I noticed something unusual. The parking lot was no longer empty. Two vans were parked next to my car out front.

“Huh…” I said, trying to find the people the vans belonged to. “We’re not alone out here anymore.”

“What?” Jupiter asked, jumping out of her seat.

“There are two black vans out front. They match, too. I wonder if they came together.”

Jupiter ran toward me. “Get away from that window.”

She pulled me away and closed the curtains.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

She pushed a couch in front of the door.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Do you know those guys?”

She shook her head. “Just stay away from the windows. We don’t want anyone to know we’re in here.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

She rolled her eyes. “Are you dense? We’re in the middle of the Wire District. No help for miles. Those guys could be freaks for all we know. Just use your head. Pretend we’re not here and if they knock on the door, don’t answer it. Let’s just get in the machine as quickly as we can and then get out of here.”

“But won’t we be more vulnerable in the machine?”

Jupiter typed as quickly as she could. “Just stay away from the window and quit distracting me.”

Jupiter’s desperation to melt concerned me. Her anxiety over the vans outside was also a cause for alarm. It might have been paranoia on my part, but something deep inside of me was trying to tell me that I was about to make a terrible, unfixable mistake.

Melting Pot

“We’re almost ready to go,” Jupiter said. A fingernail pressed against the side of her mouth as she stared at the monitor. “Come over here.”

She stood up and went to the prepping machine. “We need to take the DNA test.” Then she took a scalpel from the sterilization compartment, scrapped off a sliver of skin from the back of her hand, and put it into the scanner.

“Why do we need to do this?” I asked, as she took me by the wrist and scraped the back of my hand.

“It’s just to make sure we are who we say we are. They don’t want people joining under false pretenses.”

After we passed the DNA test, we went through a series of other tests. Blood test, urine test, a quick psychological evaluation. All to make sure it would be a safe joining. When they were all finished, Jupiter examined the results.

“We both pass,” she said, pushing the palm of her hand in my face like she was high-fiving my forehead.

I wiped her hand sweat from my eyelids.

“One last thing,” she said. “Hold out your arm.”

When I gave her my arm, she stuck a needle as large as a snake fang into my wrist. The needle was connected to the machine by a thick yellow tube that pumped a chunky fluid into my veins.

“What the fuck is this?” I cried.

She hooked herself to the machine. “It’s just prep work.”

It felt like globs of mucus under my skin.

“Is it supposed to hurt this much?” I whined.

There was so much pressure in my blood vessels that it felt like my skin was about to burst.

“You’ll get used to it.” She said this with her face all twisted up, cringing at the pain even worse than I was.

Then she pulled another tube out of the machine. “Shove this down your throat.”

I stepped back as far as I could with the needle in my arm. “Are you fucking with me?”

“This is a budget bond hotel,” she said. “We’re stuck using this ancient medieval tech. It’s not as pleasant as the upscale stuff.”

I took the tube and looked at it. The plastic was warped and covered in mold. None of this seemed right. Not only was the tech ancient, but it was filthy and breaking down.

“Are you sure all this stuff is safe?”

Jupiter shrugged and then fed an identical tube through her lips and into her throat. A glowing green fluid spewed out of the machine and disappeared into her mouth. I watched her for a moment, making sure she didn’t drop dead from the radioactive chemicals emptying into her body. When she seemed okay, I did as she did. I forced the tube as deep in my mouth as possible. I didn’t want to taste whatever that glowing stuff was.

When the machine beeped twice, we were able to pull the needles out of our arms. When it beeped four times, we pulled the tubes out of our throats.

Jupiter covered her mouth with her freckled hand. “Don’t puke any of it up.”

She gulped three times as her body tried to reject the glowing fluid. I could taste it in the back of my mouth. A bitter, mediciney, rotten-egg flavor that reminded me of the smell of hair salon perm chemicals. It wasn’t easy, but I made myself hold down the fluids. I didn’t want any of that stuff coming back up again. The taste would’ve been unbearable.

Jupiter wiped her mouth with her arm and looked me in the eyes.

“We can join now,” she said.

Then we had a moment together. As we stared at each other, looking in each other’s eyes, we didn’t need to communicate in words. We both knew what each other was thinking. It was the anticipation of connecting on a level more intimate than we’d ever been with another person. We were about to join in the flesh, become one body, one mind. It was a bit exciting, but it was mostly scary as hell.

“Take off your robe,” she said.

She turned to the bonding machine in the back. It was a large metal chamber, like some kind of double-high coffin or cryogenic chamber built for two. As she dropped her robe, I saw horrible wounds across her back. Cuts, bruises, cigarette burns. All very recent.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

She looked back at me. “It’s nothing. Forget you saw it.”

I went to her. “How can I just forget about it? Who did that to you?”

“We don’t have time to discuss it. Just take your clothes off and get into the machine.”

I didn’t do as she said. The marks on her back were too big of a concern to me.

“How am I supposed to just ignore something like that?”

Jupiter opened the hatch to the chamber, saying, “Just do what I—”

She froze when her eyes looked down. Something was inside of the machine. Something that made her jump out of her skin.

“What is it?”

She held out her hand, trying to get me to stay back.

“Is there something in there?” I asked.

“It’s nothing. Shit…”

It was definitely not nothing. I approached the machine and saw a body inside of the tub. Two long-dead humans, half-melted together. They looked mummified inside of there. A pile of bones and beef jerky.

“What the fuck?” I cried.

“Don’t worry about,” she said, pulling the bodies out of the machine.

My mouth dropped open in horror. I looked at the machine, then to Jupiter, then at the bodies, then back to the machine. “I’m not getting in there! That thing is a deathtrap!”

Jupiter scanned the machine and noticed the problem.

“I can fix it,” she said, going toward the wires in the back.

“How the hell do you know how to fix it? We’ll die if we use this piece of junk.”

I looked down at the conjoined corpses on the floor. They appeared to have died horribly, painfully.

“Rats chewed through the cable,” Jupiter said. “It prevented the machine from fully bonding these people.”

“They were just left here to die? What if that happens to us?”

As I panicked, I imagined what the two corpses went through as they died. Was it an instant death? Or did they die slowly, of thirst or starvation? And how long ago did this happen? Their corpses looked decades old.

Jupiter pulled tweezers and tape from her purse. “All I have to do is reconnect the wires and tape them back up. It’ll be okay.”

I shook my head. “No way. No fucking way. I’m done. Forget it. I’m not going through with it.”

“You have to go through with it. There’s no going back now.”

“Like hell there isn’t.” I gathered up my things and went for the door.

“You can’t leave!” She raced after me and grabbed my arm.

“Let go,” I said, pulling my arm away. “I mean it.”

“Just get into the machine.” She yanked my arm back.

“I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to be joined. All of this is just too fucked up.”

“But we have to go through with it.”

“We don’t have to do anything. That machine is going to kill us if we go in there.”

Jupiter gripped me by the shoulders with her long bony fingers and looked me in the eyes. Her nipples poked me forcefully in the chest like two angry muggers with switchblades.

She said in as firm a tone as possible, “Sammy. Listen to me. If you don’t get in that machine and join with me right now you’re going to die.”

I shook my head. “Don’t try to threaten me. I’m not buying it.”

“It’s not a threat,” she said. Then she lifted up my arm and pointed at my tissue. The muscles inside were shifting and oozing. Like there was some kind of lava lamp beneath my skin. “Your molecular structure is already breaking down, making you malleable. You’re being dissolved from the inside out.”

I pushed her away and examined my hands. “What…”

She said, “Yeah, you’re right, the machine might kill you. But if you don’t see this procedure through to the end then you’ll die for sure. You’ll melt into a pile of snot on the floor.” I looked at her. This wasn’t funny. Calling the situation a nightmare would be putting it mildly. What kind of idiot am I for letting some strange woman I didn’t even know stuff me full of green glowing chemicals?

“Come on,” she said, pulling me toward the machine.

I didn’t resist. I let her guide me, no longer protesting. I left my future in her hands.

She reconnected the wires, wrapped them with the tape, and made sure all the other components appeared to be functional. Then she typed in the final instructions the machine needed to begin.

“Take this off,” she said, removing my robe for me. When I looked down at my skin, I saw a whirlpool of whites and pinks and yellows swirling through my flesh.

I crawled into the machine and lay on my back, my muscles weak and mushy. Then Jupiter climbed in, flopping her rubbery body on top of mine, and closed the lid. I felt like I was inside of a giant man-sized Jell-O mold. Or perhaps a soggy, leftover casserole tossed in the microwave. I hoped we didn’t explode before we were fully cooked.

The process of joining was much slower than I thought it was going to be. I assumed we would just fall asleep the second we entered the machine, then awake as one person once the procedure was finished. But it wasn’t that way at all. We were awake for almost every second of it, right up until the last stage of molding.

Jupiter and I lay together in there like two pieces of meat slowly digesting inside a metal stomach. The dim lighting inside the chamber was just bright enough so that we could see each other’s faces. I stared into her deep hazel eyes. As I gazed into her pupils, I realized just how foreign she was to me. She was a complete stranger. A total mystery. I had absolutely no idea who she really was or what she was all about. And yet, soon she would become me and I would become her. We would be more familiar with each other than we’d ever been with anyone else in our lives. The idea was completely surreal.

“You’re getting squishy,” she said, pushing her fingers into my chest like wet cake batter.

Then she smiled at me, revealing a row of translucent jiggly teeth behind her colorless marshmallow lips. Our bones were turning to gelatin.

“So are you,” I said. “I can feel your skin dribbling down my legs.”

We giggled together. We didn’t know what else to do. It was so absurd yet horrifying to witness our own bodies dissolving that all we could do was laugh. It was better to laugh than to worry. We didn’t discuss it but it was in both our heads—we wondered if the machine was actually fixed and would complete the procedure or were we going to end up like the twisted conjoined mummies we left in a pile on the hotel room floor.

“We’re getting sticky,” Jupiter said as she touched her hand to my skin. “Look at this.”

Then she lifted her breasts from my chest and flopped them back down. They separated from me like two blobs of wet clay.

“See?” she said, looking down at her breasts as she rubbed them against me. “It’s like they’re made of glue.”

As I watched her playing with her boobs on me—as though I wasn’t a guy, as though I wasn’t even there—I admired how uninhibited she was. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be so open, so free of embarrassment or worry. That kind of outgoingness was not in my vocabulary. I’m going to be so much different once I become her.

Jupiter could tell I was getting turned on by the situation. It was hard enough to ignore a beautiful naked woman lying on top of me, let alone one who was rubbing her sticky breasts against my chest. She stopped playing with her melting body parts and looked me in the eyes. Then she kissed me. Our lips were moist and syrupy as they pressed together. She pulled away and looked down at me.

“What was that for?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I just wanted to see what it would feel like to kiss me.”

“To kiss you?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She smiled. “Once our minds join together, your memories will be mine. I’ll experience, through you, what it’s like to kiss me.”

“Have you ever fantasized about kissing yourself before?”

She looked away to think about it. Her eyeballs were pink and runny like half-cooked egg whites. “Maybe…”

“Well, I don’t want to know what it’s like to kiss myself.”

“You don’t, do you?” she said in a mischievous voice.

Then she licked my neck. And as she pulled away, I saw a piece of my skin dissolving on her tongue.

“Don’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s weird. We’re about to become the same person.”

“So?” Then she rubbed her creamy body against mine. “Just think of it as masturbation.”

She tried to arouse me, tried to give me an erection so that we could have sex inside the machine. Even as a semi-solid being she was beautiful, but I felt I would regret making love to a person I was about to become. Still, I didn’t tell her to stop. In fact, I couldn’t help but kiss her back whenever she wrapped her lips around mine. It was surely sending her the wrong message.

“Come on,” she said. “Put it in.”

She stroked my rubbery penis with her fingers, but it wouldn’t get hard. It was now the texture of a condom water balloon, squishing into bubbles within her hand.

“Forget it. This is just wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice was gurgling now. It sounded less human and more fish. “Everybody has sex during their joining. It’s natural. It helps the bonding process.”

“I never heard of that before.”

She rubbed my chest and kissed my neck. “It’s true. Your body goes into a heightened state of sensitivity as it melts. It’s weird not to make love.”

I don’t know how she was able to do it, but she somehow worked my flaccid water balloon member inside of her by rolling her hips and rubbing our crouches together. With her genitals as squishy and flexible as bread dough, my penis didn’t have to be erect to slip inside.

All I could think of to say was, “This is so messed up…” as we fucked like two piles of wet clay inside of the machine.

The texture of our bodies changed from sticky dough to oily slime. Our flesh became slippery and jiggled like gelatin. Soon, it wasn’t the sex that was the intense sensation. It was the feeling of our flesh oozing together. I felt it in my penis first, because it was the part of me already inside her, getting rubbed and kneaded by her greasy folds. As I came, my dick melted inside of her, combined with her. And the sensation of it being digested by her flesh was far more intense and explosive than the orgasm. She felt it too as the clitoris and outer labia of her vagina was absorbed into my pelvis. She moaned in my ear. An inhuman, gurgling moan.

But it wasn’t just in our genitals. Our whole bodies were melting together, creating the same orgasmic sensations wherever we touched. Her breasts dissolved into my chest. My stomach disappeared into her ribcage. We were like two blobs of oil paint being mixed together to form a new color.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice like running water. I wasn’t sure if it was just her eyeballs liquefying and leaking out of the sockets, but she appeared to be crying. “I’m so sorry…”

“What?” My voice was slow and distant, like an underwater echo.

Just before our vocal cords turned to soup, she said, “You’ll know soon enough.”

Then her face turned to pudding and dripped down her neck and shoulders. Our forms collapsed, dissolving into a paste of indistinguishable meat. But even though our physical bodies were no more, we still felt every minute of the joining. We became a soup of Sammy and Jupiter. I could no longer feel where I ended and she began. Every molecule of her body pressed against mine.

Euphoria overtook my senses. And as the machine mixed and kneaded us like ingredients for a cake, I felt a surge of ecstasy as Jupiter’s soul became a part of mine. All of her thoughts and memories flooded into me, and I finally knew all there was to know about her.

I became her. She became me.

PART TWO

JUPITER MINNEAU

Porn Eyes

I couldn’t see the man’s face as he buried the blade of the hunting knife into the governor’s throat, but he could see mine.

I always thought I could take anything, that I was a tough chick with skin as thick as steel. But when I saw the old man’s life slip away from him at the hands of a shadowy assailant, I couldn’t help but scream like a little eight-year-old girl. When the attacker looked at me, he stared right into my eyes, as if memorizing every little detail on my face, right down to the last freckle on my nose. But all I saw of him were his eyes. His twisted, perverted eyes.

The killer had porn eyes. That’s the only distinguishable feature about him. Porn eyes was a disfigurement caused by watching too much holographic pornography, where the images projected at your eyes from within high-resolution holo-goggles become burned into your corneas due to overuse. Warnings were everywhere: never use holo-goggles for more than 90 minutes a day. But there were plenty of porn addicts out there who just couldn’t help themselves, who abused the technology despite all the warnings.

I ran out of there like a stupid teen from a terrible horror movie—tripping over my own feet, screaming for help, running down the dark empty stairwell instead of heading for the lobby, which was full of security and people who could actually help me. But I wasn’t thinking. I went for the closest exit and ran, twisting my ankle as I missed a step and rolled down a flight of stairs. By the time I limped out into the street with a bloody nose and running mascara, I looked more like a deranged alcoholic than a woman looking for help. If I saw video footage of me at that moment I never would have recognized myself. It was like some other weak, pathetic girl was in control of my body.

How I escaped alive I had no idea. The man didn’t follow me. He just let me go. I hoped that he let me go because he knew I didn’t get a good look at his face, that I couldn’t identify him. But in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think maybe he let me go on purpose, so that he could take me out under better circumstances than stabbing me out on the street in broad daylight.

The cops showed up twenty minutes later. I called them from a coffee shop three blocks down and waited there until the streets were flooded with the sound of sirens. I wasn’t allowed to leave for hours. The governor was just assassinated and I was the only witness. The street was blocked off. Reporters filled the scene just as fast as the police. I hid in the coffee shop, my back to the window. I didn’t want anyone to know who I was, just in case the information got back to the killer. I wouldn’t even leave my seat until the detectives came for me.

“What were you doing in the governor’s office?” a detective asked me back at the station. He had thin lips, salt and pepper hair, and wrinkles that were too deep for a man in his thirties.

I was still shaking. The whole thing didn’t seem real, like it all happened to somebody else I saw in a movie. “I wanted to speak to him.”

“About what?”

I took a sip of black coffee from a white plastic mug. “I was supposed to merge with his daughter. It was her idea. She found my profile on the matchmaking site and we were all set to meet up for the joining this week.”

“We have no records of this,” said the detective. “When we ran the background check on you it would have shown a scheduled merger between you and the governor’s daughter.”

“That’s because the merger was cancelled. The governor wouldn’t allow his daughter to join with me.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I went to his office to speak with him. I wanted to see what his problem was with me and try to convince him to change his mind. I thought his daughter and I would be a perfect match. It didn’t make sense.”

A second man was in the back of the room, typing in a laptop as I spoke, doing research for the head detective. He straightened the black-rimmed glasses on his face and said, “The governor’s daughter doesn’t have a profile on any of the top matchmaking sites.”

The head detective looked me in the eyes. “Which site did you meet her on? Was it a small independent site? Maybe a classified ad?”

I shook my head. “No, she was on MergeMeet. The big one.”

“She doesn’t have a profile on MergeMeet,” said the man with the black-rimmed glasses.

I shook my head, not sure how to respond. “Her father must have taken it down. Maybe he didn’t want her to merge with anyone. That’s not uncommon. Parents often have problems letting their children go, especially since she was his only daughter.”

“Will she be able to back up your story?” asked the head detective.

“Of course,” I said. “We’ve spoken many times. Just talk to her and you’ll know I’m telling you the truth.”

The head detective leaned back in his seat. “Yes, we’ll do that as soon as we find her.”

“What do you mean find her? Where is she?”

“She’s missing. She didn’t show up for work this morning. Nobody’s seen her since last night.”

“What does that mean? Did something happen to her?”

The detective shrugged. “You tell me.”

I shook my head. This was unbelievable. I was beginning to feel more like a suspect than a witness. “How would I know? The last time I spoke to her was three days ago, when she told me the joining was off.”

The detective nodded. “Well, once we track down the daughter we’ll see if your story checks out. But even if she confirms this, it doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.”

“What? Why not?”

“You weren’t scheduled to meet with him today. Your name is completely absent from his appointment schedule and his assistant has never heard of you. This means you were in a place you shouldn’t have been.”

“I tried contacting him on the phone but he wouldn’t return my calls.”

“How did you even get up to his office? How did you get past security?”

“There wasn’t any security when I got there.”

“So you just let yourself up?”

“I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”

“The security camera shows you taking the keycard from the security desk and sneaking upstairs. And you didn’t think that was a big deal?”

“I just wanted to talk to him.”

The detective let out a long sigh at me. “This doesn’t look good for you, Miss Minneau.”

“What do you mean? You actually think I did it?”

“You have a motive.”

I nearly spilled my coffee when he looked at me with his small accusing eyes.

“What motive?”

“You said it yourself. The governor refused to let you merge with his daughter. Do you know how many merger-related incidents of assault and murder we get every day?”

I shook my head.

“Dozens. And every instance always boils down to the same thing: desperation. People who think they’ll have no future unless they merge, who have been applying for a merging partner for years and keep getting rejected. Then they get rejected one too many times and they snap. They respond with violence.”

My voice became frantic. “That’s not me at all.”

“It’s not?” the head detective asked, looking over his printouts. “You’ve been rejected twenty times in the past seven months. If you ask me, you fit the profile to a T.”

I didn’t know how to react. “I’m not a violent person. I would never do that.”

The detective just laughed at me as I realized what a stupid comment I just made. I had been arrested three times in the past for drunken assault, usually because some scumbag grabbed my ass at a bar and I planted his ugly face into the concrete floor. There was also the restraining order put against me by my cheating ex-boyfriend because I kept slashing his tires, disrupting his place of business, and threatening his stuck-up idiotic slut of a new girlfriend. I didn’t exactly have a clean record. Not by a long shot.

After the detective listed off each line of my criminal record, he said, “As I said, you fit the profile to a T.”

“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t kill the governor. I already told you who did.”

He looked over the report an officer filled out back at the coffee shop. “You said a man in black stabbed him in the throat. That’s hardly anything to go on.”

“It was dark. The only light in the room was from a computer monitor.”

“So the killer turned the lights off when he entered the room?”

“I don’t know.”

“And if anyone wanted him dead, why would they go through the trouble of breaking into the state building? And why use a knife? There are much easier ways to assassinate a governor.”

I just shrugged. I didn’t have any answers for him. All I knew was what I saw.

“All the facts are pointing at you, Jupiter. Unless you can give us more information on this mystery killer of yours, you’re going to be in deep shit.”

“What about his eyes?” I asked.

“His eyes?”

“He had porn eyes. Can’t you use that? I can describe them to you. They were very unique. I would recognize them anywhere.”

“How could you even see his eyes? You said he was standing across the room, in the dark. How could you even tell that he had pornographic images burned into his cornea?”

“I’m a woman. I’ve trained myself to spot a creep with porn eyes from a mile away.”

The detective sighed and gave me a slight nod.

“Very well,” he said. “We’ll have you come in tomorrow to meet with a sketch artist. With luck, we might be able to get a match on the killer. Porn imprints are just as identifying as fingerprints or dental records, but they rarely bring up a match due to how frequently they change. The more the suspect uses holo-goggles, the less likely there will be a match. It’ll only work if the suspect was arrested within the last year.”

The man with black-rimmed glasses interjected, “And that’s only when we have a photograph. It’ll be less likely to get a match with just a sketch.”

The detective gathered up his paperwork and stood up.

He said, “Don’t leave town. We’ll probably have more questions for you. I’d like you to come back in the afternoon tomorrow, around 1 PM.”

A dumb expression on my face. “You’re letting me go?”

“For now,” the detective said.

“Why?”

The detective laughed. “You can stay in a cell overnight if you’d prefer.”

I shook my head. “No, I’d like to go home. I was just curious.”

The detective cleared his throat. “There’s one reason, and one reason only, why we believe you might be telling the truth.”

“And what is that?”

“The security guard that was missing from his station, the one whose keycard you swiped, is unaccounted for.”

“What does that mean?”

“He left his post and never came back. We have no idea what happened to him. Perhaps he walked out on the job, perhaps he was paid to leave his station so the killer could get through, or perhaps he was murdered by your man in black. I don’t believe it was a coincidence. Until we know for sure what happened to him, you’re not the prime suspect. Just don’t leave town and don’t speak to the press. I’m sure you realize, given the stature of the victim, this is a very sensitive case. Stay home for the next few days.”

The relief I felt washing over me at that moment was short lived. After I was escorted out of the building, I realized I was on my own. On the street, I never felt more vulnerable in my life. The police weren’t the worst thing I should’ve been worried about. The killer who saw my face would likely come after me the second he figured out who I was.

Scanning the street, I made sure nobody was watching me. The best time for the killer to strike would be on my way home from the police station. The only thing he knew about me at that moment was my face and the fact that I was picked up by the police. He was very likely out there, nearby, waiting for the right moment to take me out. So I didn’t take any chances. I called a cab and waited for it in the lobby of the police station. Then I made sure I wasn’t followed the whole ride home.

When I got to my apartment, my roommate was watching gay porn on the big screen in the living room. She jumped when she saw me, but didn’t turn it off.

“How’s it going, bitch?” the shrimpy bald girl asked, trying to act natural.

“What the hell are you watching?” I asked her.

“Oh, this?” she chuckled, then turned the volume up. A sexy bass beat filled the apartment. “Isn’t it hilarious?”

Sicily had a thing for watching gay men having sex, but she’d never admit it. She was a +5 and two of the men that made up her Compound were homosexual males. That part of her still enjoyed gay porn. The two straight men in her were embarrassed by this fact and always tried to cover it up by pretending her interest in gay men was anything but sexual.

“Yeah, hilarious.”

She pointed at one of the actors in the video. “Look at him. He’s so serious. Look at how he’s pointing his dick at the other guy and trying to act so sexy. It’s ridiculous.”

Then she giggled with her hand over her mouth.

I shook my head at her. “You don’t have to pretend you don’t really like watching gay porn. You’re a woman. You’re supposed to like gay porn.”

“I don’t like gay porn for real,” she said.

Then she got really quiet. The silence was interrupted by a naked man stepping out of the bathroom, holding a monster-sized black dildo.

Before he saw me in the room, he said, “So you gonna bang my ass with this shit or do I have to do it myself?”

It was Sicily’s douchebag boyfriend, Bobby, a.k.a. Big B, a.k.a. The Rap Genius, all self-given nicknames. He was once the four members of the boy band Glimmer Boys before he merged into a single hip hop teen idol dickhead. Years ago, he was considered a big deal. Rich, famous, adored by many. But then his label dropped him for releasing what was considered by pretty much every single music critic in the industry to be the most pretentious, self-indulgent and downright terrible hip hop album of all time. He became an embarrassment to everyone but himself.

It was my fault Sicily was dating Big B. I had way too much to drink one night and brought the idiot home for a one night stand. After I puked over the side of my bed and passed out in his crotch, he went to the next room and hooked up with my roommate instead. He told her I was a dead fuck and asked her to finish him off. She was desperate enough to oblige. He’d been coming over to our apartment every weekend since.

“Oh, I didn’t see you there, Jupe,” said Big B, looking me up and down. “You can join us if you want. There’s plenty of me to go around.”

He took a couple of quick, stealthy tugs at his penis, trying to make it look bigger in front of me. Other than that, he didn’t seem to be embarrassed by his nudity.

I just stared him in the eyes and said fuck no without using any words. Then I glanced over at the television. “Are you into gay porn, too?”

Big B shook his head. “Nah, Fire Crotch. I just let Lil Sis here watch it. That shit gets her all wet and wild-like. Warms her up for me.”

I hated when he called me Fire Crotch. That was all I remembered from the night I took him into my bed. He kept staring at my ginger-colored pubic hair with his mouth dropped in amazement. He must’ve never seen a real redhead before. But even worse than calling me Fire Crotch was how he called my roommate Lil Sis. I assumed that he meant Lil because she was short, and Sis as an abbreviation of Sicily. But whenever he said it all I thought of was little sister, like he had some kind of incest fantasy roleplay going on with her.

“Whatever you say, Big B,” I said.

When I glanced at the large dildo in his hand, he hid it behind his back.

“I’m not going by Big B anymore. The B is dead. Call me DJ Cokespoon. I’m going underground with that shit. Hardcore. You know what I’m sayin?”

Every second I spent with this guy was a living hell. I cursed Sicily every day for having such low standards. She was a med student for Chrissake. She shouldn’t have to deal with such a lowlife scumbag.

Sicily turned off the television. “Put your pants on, Bobby. We’ll finish this later.”

He didn’t seem to hear her request. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s DJ Cokespoon.”

I got between them so that they’d pay attention to me. I had to tell somebody about what had happened to me that day.

“You guys, I’ve got something really important I need to talk to you about.”

Sicily ignored me, the twelve bracelets on her wrist jangling as she pointed at her boyfriend. “I’m not calling you that. It’s just your stage name.”

“Seriously,” I said. “You’ll never believe what happened to me.”

“It’s not just my stage name, Lil Sis. The Cokespoon is me now.” He waved the black dildo at her as he spoke. “When I decide my name, it’s for reals. I put all my soul into my music. This ain’t no persona.”

“You’ve got to hear me out,” I said.

But they weren’t listening.

“You just came up with that stupid name last night,” Sicily said.

“I might even be in danger…” I said.

“Stupid? Who you think you calling stupid?”

“You two might even be in danger if you’re around me,” I said.

“Why are you calling yourself DJ Cokespoon, anyway? You don’t do coke and you’re not even a DJ.”

They weren’t hearing a word I was saying, but I kept speaking. “I think you two should stay away from me for awhile. Maybe stay at Bobby’s place.”

“DJ stands for Dennis James. You know, to respect my old Glimmer Boys components.”

“I saw a man killed today. I think—”

I was interrupted by my phone ringing in my pocket. Sicily and her boyfriend continued arguing as I went into the kitchen to take the call. It was Detective Harrelson. I was surprised to be hearing from him so soon and by the tone of his voice it sounded like something was up.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’ve got news on the case,” he said. “It looks like your story checks out.”

“Did you get a hold of the governor’s daughter?”

He was silent for a moment. “We found her body.”

“What?”

“We also found the security guard’s body stuffed in a vent in the downstairs men’s room at the capitol building. This is bigger than we thought. We’d like you to come back to the station. For your own safety.”

“What happened to Laura? Why was she killed?”

“We’re not sure yet. But we believe we know who the killer is. If we’re right you’re going to need our protection. This is a very dangerous man. Your testimony will be invaluable in taking him down.”

“What do you mean dangerous? Who is he?”

“We’re sending a car to pick you up now. The officer should be there any minute.”

“Wait a minute. Does he know who I am? Is he coming here?”

The call ended. I tried calling back, but it didn’t go through.

I went back into the living room where my roommate was still bickering with her boyfriend.

“You two need to get out of here,” I said, but they still weren’t listening.

I went to my room and stuffed some clothes into my overly large bamboo purse, changed my shoes, took a swig of whiskey from my underwear drawer.

As I left my room, there was a knock at the door.

I ducked into the bathroom. “Don’t answer it.”

But Sicily still wasn’t listening. She opened the door and jumped back when she saw the man standing in the hallway. It was a police officer.

“Oh, shit, it’s FIVE-O,” Big B said when he saw the cop.

“I’m here for a Jupiter Minneau,” the policeman said.

Big B lifted up his giant black dildo like a baseball bat, completely unconcerned with his nudity around the cop. “Stay back. You can’t come in without a warrant, bro.”

I shook my head and said, “Relax, Cokespoon. He’s here for me.”

When I stepped out of the bathroom, the cop looked over at me. A smile spread across his face. A deep scar split the middle of his lips, causing his smile to look crooked and warped. His eyes met mine and I recognized him immediately. The tiny images of naked women burned into his cornea glared back at me the same way they did in the governor’s office. I wasn’t the only person who realized something was up. Sicily saw blood covering the side of the uniform where a blade had sliced through the ribcage, just below the armpit, of the previous owner of the clothes.

“Oh, shit…” I cried.

The man at the door pulled out his revolver and shot Big B in the chest. He fell to the floor, still clutching to the dildo with all his strength.

“Bobby!” Sicily screamed.

Big B coughed blood onto his naked chest. In a wheezing voice, he said, “It’s DJ Cokespoon!”

Then a bullet blew off the top of his head.

As Sicily cried out, covered in her boyfriend’s blood, the cop grabbed her by the throat and aimed the gun at her head. Then he dragged her to the center of the room, stepping toward me as I backed into my bedroom.

“Come here,” he said. His voice was deeper and rougher now that he wasn’t impersonating the cop. It was like he had something stuck in his throat. There was a long scar down the center of his neck—perhaps an old wound that damaged his voice box.

Sicily’s eyes watered at me, drool leaking down her pierced lips. The skin on her bald head wrinkled against the large man’s shoulder.

“I have no problem blowing her brains out right here,” the man said.

My makeup ran down my cheeks as I stared at my roommate. She was the closest thing I had to a friend in this city. It was all my fault this was happening to her.

“I’m sorry…” I told her.

Then I ran into my room and locked the door. Sicily was dead either way. Giving myself up to the killer wasn’t going to change that.

The gunshot echoed through the apartment as I crawled out the window onto the fire escape. My head flooded with so much adrenaline I couldn’t even feel the metal steps under my shoes as I raced down to the street.

Two bullets hit the dumpsters as I rushed out of the alleyway toward the cop car on the street.

“Help!” I cried out.

When I opened the door, the bodies of the two cops slumped over. One of them was in his underwear. The other’s throat was slit from ear to ear.

“Is anyone there?” I shouted into the dashboard.

Dispatch was communicating between cars in the area, but they couldn’t hear me. The inside of the cop car looked like a spaceship. I couldn’t figure out how anything worked. I pushed buttons, shouting at the voices on the line, but nobody could hear me. I didn’t have time to mess around for more than a few seconds, so I took the handgun from the clothed officer and booked it down the road.

I assumed the man was following me, but I didn’t turn around to find out. After twenty minutes of cutting through residential neighborhoods, hopping fences, and crawling through bushes, I felt like I’d lost the guy. Not sure where else I could go or where I could hide, I spent the night in an old muddy doghouse in some upper middleclass backyard.

Three times I tried to call Detective Harrelson, but his line wouldn’t pick up. On the fourth attempt I got through, but it wasn’t Detective Harrelson on the line.

“Is this Jupiter Minneau?” the man on the other line asked.

“Yes, it is. Where’s Detective Harrelson? I’ve been trying to reach him all night.”

“Where are you?” the man asked.

I couldn’t help but burst into tears. “I don’t know what to do. My friends were killed. He shot them right in front of me.”

“Where are you?” the man repeated.

He asked in the same voice as before. It felt mechanical the way he said it. Like it was a prerecorded message.

“Where are you?”

I hung up the phone and removed the batteries. Something was very wrong with that call. It wasn’t the police. Somebody had Detective Harrelson’s phone. I couldn’t count on the police to protect me. I was on my own.

Hiding Places

There was no place to go, no place to hide. I didn’t have any friends or family in the city. The closest relative was a cousin who lived somewhere in the Morrison District, but I hadn’t seen him since he was a kid, and he’d already joined with two other people. He was hardly family anymore. And even if I went to see him I was sure the man hunting me already knew about him. My best bet was to stay away from any predictable place I might run to. No coworkers, no neighbors, no police. But I couldn’t hide in dog houses for long. I needed a real place to hide out.

That’s when it hit me. The best way to disappear would be to melt with somebody. I would have a new face, a new identity, a new apartment, a new bank account. But I couldn’t choose anybody in my league. I had to choose somebody desperate, somebody willing to do it on short notice, who would be thankful that anyone agreed to a joining.

I went to a library, a small residential branch that only neighborhood housewives ever visited, and used the computer to find a match. There weren’t very many worthwhile matches in the city. They were either too good for me or so crazy-trash-eating-homeless-man bad. I’d be better off killing myself right then and there. My best bet was to shoot for artists. Nobody joined with artists. Writers, actors, graphic designers—they usually had some amount of value to offer, depending on their skill level. But painters, poets, and sculptors—nobody wanted them unless they were the best of the best. And if you were the best of the best you wouldn’t use a matchmaking website to find a partner, you’d have your manager start a bidding war over you.

I found the perfect candidate when I came across the profile for Samuel Smyth. The guy was exactly what I needed. He was a college graduate, top of his class, successful parents, proper upbringing, no criminal record, no history of mental illness, and all around nice, normal guy. His only flaw was that he was an artist and missed his opportunity to join with other artists when he had the chance. For anyone else, he would have been a waste of time to join with. For me, he’d be a perfect opportunity to disappear. The last thing the killer would expect would be for me to melt with somebody, especially if I were to switch genders.

The response came almost immediately after it was sent. Sammy Smyth was clearly desperate. By the tone of his message, he was obviously shocked and excited somebody like me actually responded to his profile.

I messaged him: When’s the soonest you can meet?

The response came much later than his first response.

He responded: When’s the latest you’re willing to wait?

When I got his message, I groaned so loudly that the old librarian lady gave me the evil eye. I should’ve known he was one of those—an individualist, scared of losing his identity in a joining. I didn’t have time to be patient with him.

I responded: 9 PM tomorrow.

He messaged: So soon? Can’t we wait a while? Get to know each other first? It’ll be my first time. I don’t want to rush it.

I shook my head at his response.

It was going to take lying out my ass to convince this guy: I was scheduled to join with somebody else tomorrow, but they cancelled. I already gave up my apartment and all my stuff is in storage. So I have nowhere else to go. If you’re not able to do it today or tomorrow, I’ll have to find somebody else to join with.

His response was immediate: No, sorry, I’ll be able to do it tomorrow at 9 PM.

I messaged: What about tonight?

He messaged: I don’t know about tonight.

I messaged: Let’s meet at 7 PM tonight.

Then I cut him off before he could send any new messages. Once I typed in the date and time, the website handled the rest of the scheduling. Sammy Smyth was locked in for the joining appointment. If he didn’t show up he’d be out of luck. I just hoped he didn’t chicken out on me. Bond hotels were expensive. If he skipped out on the meeting I probably wouldn’t be able to afford bonding with anyone else. I would have to put faith in his desperation.

Once everything was all set up, I just had to lay low until later that night. Getting some food, going to see a movie. There was probably some way I could pass the time. It was going to be my last day as Jupiter Minneau. I decided I might as well enjoy it.

I tried to think of the most fun I could have on my last day as Jupiter, but the only thing I kept thinking about was sex. If I became male after joining with Sammy Smyth this was possibly my last chance to have sex as a woman. After that day, I’d probably be having sex with women, which was kind of a strange thought. I was not exactly bisexual, though I used to make out with girls at keg parties in college when I was drunk and trying to turn on the guy I had a crush on. I knew I could get used to anything, though. Becoming male would probably be far stranger than dating women.

Unfortunately, I just wasn’t feeling it. Although sex was the only thing I could think of to do before melting, I just wasn’t up for actually going through with it. Not after what happened to my roommate. Not after all that had happened to me. What I really wanted to do was get a drink.

I went to a random bar called Old McBarebottom’s Tavern. I didn’t know what the heck that name was all about until I stepped inside and realized it was a damned nudist bar. A bunch of pink pixilated people gathered around a table, two at the bar, all of them over the age of fifty.

Nudism was legalized in the city a couple of decades ago. Anyone could walk around the streets as naked as they wanted. They could ride the bus naked, they could shop naked, they could go to work naked. About twenty percent of all people you saw walking around in public these days were nude. But you didn’t actually see anyone naked. They were censored. Conservative parents and rightwing politicians couldn’t get the law changed, so instead they focused on a compromise—they set up nude censorship machines that blurred and pixilated the private parts of anyone walking around naked in public. Nudists were allowed the freedom to walk around without clothes, and conservatives and their children were not forced to witness their indecency. Of course, perverts could buy descramblers on the black market that allowed them to see the nudists in their natural state, but the fine for possessing such a device was so steep that it rarely ever happened.

The people around me were pixilated blobs from the neck down. As I walked past them, my own skin became pixilated when my hands got too close. One problem with the censorship machines was that they blurred naked people so much that it made it difficult to tell just where their actual private parts were on their body. It wasn’t uncommon to accidentally brush your hand against their naked parts when you thought they were several inches farther away than they really were. I’m not sure if it was the old man’s penis or his thigh, but my finger flicked against something as I passed him on my way to a stool at the bar. I didn’t look back at him.

“Wild Turkey,” I told the bartender. “A double.”

The old guy must have been Old McBarebottom himself. He was probably the oldest in the bar, pushing eighty. And he was so blurry that I had a hard time seeing what alcohol was available on the shelves behind him.

“Clothes aren’t permitted in this bar,” he told me.

“Are you serious? I just want a drink.”

“Rules are rules.”

“It’s fucking cold in here. You really expect me to freeze to death?”

The man shrugged. Or I think he shrugged. His blurry mass moved up and down for a second.

“I’ll turn the heat up if you like but I can’t serve you with clothes on.”

“Fine. But I’m only taking my top off and I’m wearing a scarf.”

Old McBarebottom nodded. “I appreciate the effort.”

When I took off my shirt and bra, I watched as my breasts turned into a pixilated blur. It happened instantly. I had to feel them to make sure they were still there. I’ve never taken off my clothes in public before, but the sensation of public nudity wasn’t nearly as awkward as not being able to see parts of my body.

I looked at the blurry blob of bartender pouring my drink.

“How are you able to see what you’re doing when you’re all blurry?” I asked him.

He didn’t have problems serving me at all. He poured the double shot in a glass and placed my drink down in front of me.

“You get used to it,” he said. “I’ve been pouring drinks so long I could do it with my eyes closed.”

When I reached for my drink, I had to stretch my arms far away from my blurry body in order to see what I was grabbing. The old guy just snickered at my ineptitude.

I went for my wallet, but the bartender shook his head. “It’s on the house.”

“Really?” I asked.

He nodded. “Having a pretty girl like you in this bar is good for business. You can drink all you want.”

I smiled like it was Christmas morning.

“Well, in that case line them up.”

Within the hour, I couldn’t tell if it was the ever-growing crowd of nudists in the room or if my vision was blurry from all the alcohol, but I had a difficult time seeing what was going on around me. I felt sick. I never should have drank so much on an empty stomach. The second I got to my feet, I knew something was wrong. I was so out of it that I couldn’t stand up straight. The fall didn’t even hurt when I landed face-down into the ceramic floor.

I woke to the smell of wet soil and flat beer. My muscles were stretched out and unable to move. Shooting pains through my spine. When my eyes blinked open, I realized I was in a dimly lit basement, chained to the rafters.

My head was spinning. I was still drunk, but it wasn’t the alcohol that made my head spin. The old bastard drugged me, slipped something into my drink. I wasn’t able to see him do it with the pixilated blur surrounding his body.

“What the fuck?” I yelled at the empty room.

I was under the tavern. I could still hear people up there, laughing and drinking. I yelled out for help, but they couldn’t hear me. Or they just ignored my cries.

Dangling from the ceiling, my toes barely touched the dirt floor. My wrists felt broken, maybe dislocated from holding up most of my weight. I was still topless, only my breasts were no longer censored and blurry. Splatters of puke painted the lower half of my body. I wondered if I had thrown up the drug the old bastard gave me. I wondered if I woke up sooner than he expected me to.

I wasn’t sure what the old man had planned for me, but I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to stick around to figure out. The guy could have had some connection to Porn Eyes. For all I knew, he was holding me until the killer could come get me. I didn’t have much time to mess around. I had to figure a way out of there and fast.

My hands were in cuffs. I wasn’t going to be able to get out of those. The chain was wrapped around the middle of the handcuffs and padlocked together. Although the padlock was old and rusty, it didn’t look like it was breakable. The chain at the top was perhaps my best chance. It wasn’t padlocked. It was just wrapped around a wooden rafter a few times. My weight was the only thing holding it in place. If I could climb up the chain all the way to the rafters I could unravel it and be free. Then I’d just have to worry about getting out of that room.

It sounded like my best option, but I wasn’t sure I was athletic enough to pull it off. Just closing my fingers around the chain was difficult. The pain in my swollen wrists extended up my hands. The circulation was caught off. The fingers were asleep and could barely move. The most I could do was wrap them around the chain, but I couldn’t put any strength into the grip. I couldn’t lift my weight off of the ground.

My vision went dizzy. It wasn’t just that my fingers were asleep, my whole body seemed to be weak and numb. The drug was still in my system. There was no way I had the strength to climb the chain. At least not for several hours, but by then it would’ve been too late. The plan wasn’t going to work.

There was another way I could get myself free that I dreaded thinking about. If I could somehow sever my left hand, I would be able to get free from the chain. Losing a hand was not a problem for me. The pain and loss of blood would surely be an issue, but I was about to join with a man at a bond hotel later that night. Once bonded, I would grow a new hand. It wouldn’t be that bad at all. Unfortunately, cutting off my own hand didn’t seem like it was going to be easy. Would I chew through my wrist with my teeth? Would I break it off? Twist it off? And what would I do about the bleeding? I could easily bleed to death with a wound like that. I could even bleed to death long before I was able to completely cut it off.

I didn’t have any other plan, though, so I had to give it a shot. I tried bringing my mouth up to my wrist, but I couldn’t reach. I decided to chew through a lower area than my wrist, through the meaty part of my forearm. But just one bite and I knew it wasn’t going to work. I bit as hard as I could until a piercing pain shot through my whole body and I drew blood from small teeth marks around a fold of arm skin. I pulled my mouth away. There was no way I could get through the whole arm. My teeth were too dull, my arm flesh was too tough, the pain was too great, and I probably would never be able to get through the bone anyway.

The only possible way I could remove my hand was if I could somehow snap it clean off. I remember reading that decapitations were common back in the old days of public hanging. If you dropped a man from too high up with too long a rope his head would just pop right off. If you dropped him from too low a distance with too short a rope he would be strangled to death. It was important to find the right balance between the two, so that the hanging would break the man’s neck without causing decapitation or strangulation. So I wondered if I could use this knowledge to somehow sever my hand at the wrist. If I dropped all my weight down on my left side, perhaps I could rip my hand off. And if I was really lucky, maybe I could force my hand out of the handcuff without having to lose it.

“Here we go…” I told my swollen left hand.

Then I pushed off of the ground with the tips of my toes, lifting my legs into the air, and allowing all of my weight to fall down on my left hand. The second my weight hit my wrists, there was a cracking sound. I screamed, then bit my lip to prevent the sound from carrying too far, just in case Old McBarebottom could hear. Both of my wrists were attacked by the pain, not just the left one. It was difficult to keep all of my weight on one side while in midair.

I held myself in the air for three more minutes. My hand wasn’t coming off. It hurt like hell to have all my weight on it, but there would need to be a lot more pressure to take it off. Another cracking sound.

“Motherfucker…”

The cracking noise wasn’t coming from my wrist. At first I thought it was, but the sound came from the rafters above me. The wooden beam I was chained to seemed to be splintering. I touched my toes to the floor and balanced myself. Then I squinted my eyes to get a better look. The beam was old and warped, bending in the middle where the chain was wrapped. I realized I wasn’t the first woman chained to this spot. Old McBarebottom had probably hung many people from this beam in the past, enough to cause it to wear down from all the weight over the years. To escape, I didn’t have to break off my hand at the wrist. I just had to break the wooden rafter.

“Come on…”

I dropped my weight on the chain, bounced up and down, trying to fracture the wood. The beam cracked and squealed, but it still held. The skin around my wrists broke open against the metal handcuffs and bled down my arms. I wondered if my hands were going to be broken off after all.

It didn’t seem like I was ever going to break through that wooden beam, but I seemed to make progress every time I dropped my weight on the chain. If I kept it up I was sure to get out of there eventually. The question was: would I get out before Old McBarebottom came for me?

Once the beam cracked and bent far enough down that I was able to place my feet flat on the ground, I knew I had it. I pushed off with my feet and jumped high enough to grab the chain, then I dropped to the ground back-first. The beam could no longer hold my weight. It splintered apart and the chain fell free, slamming against my face as I hit the dirt floor. The noise was like an explosion. The sounds of loud drunks in the bar above me went quiet. It was obvious they all heard, which meant Old McBarebottom heard as well.

I didn’t have much time.

Looking around the room for something to use for my escape, I saw something that made my heart stop. I wasn’t able to see it while I was chained up, but in the corner of the basement there was a bed. The mattress was soiled and stained with blood. Handcuffs dangled from the metal bed frame. A severed arm was still in one of the cuffs. A woman’s arm. Her fingernails painted with rainbow nail polish. An engagement ring on one finger. The bastard was holding women down there, probably using them as sex slaves and eventually killing them.

“Holy fuck…”

The guy was a perverted psychopath. Worse than Porn Eyes. How many women had he drugged and brought down here? How was he able to get them down here without anyone ever noticing? Was it because they were naked? Could people not see him carrying women into the basement due to the pixilated blurs covering both of their bodies? Was that why he forced me to take off my clothes before he would serve me?

In the other corner of the room, I saw my stuff. My clothes and bag. There was a gun in the purse, the one I took from the dead cop. That was all I needed. I went toward my it, dragging the long chain behind me. But before I could make it, the basement door opened and Old McBarebottom showed himself in the doorway. I turned to look at him and saw that he wasn’t alone. There were four other old men behind him and one woman. Their nudity was no longer hidden by pixilated blurs down in the basement, their wrinkled, saggy pale flesh glistening in the dim light.

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked the bartender, a creepy smile behind his white beard.

I couldn’t believe he wasn’t alone in this. Many of his bar patrons were in on it. Perhaps Old McBarebottom wasn’t a perverted psycho after all. Perhaps he was just a disgusting, inhuman business man who tied up women in his basement and rented them out to his customers for a hefty fee. For some reason, that seemed even worse. Dealing with one psychopath would have been much easier.

“Come here, Sweetheart,” the bartender said in a gentle voice, waving me toward him. “It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”

I turned and ran for my purse. The old men chased me. Just as I grabbed the handle of my bag, my body was thrown back. McBarebottom grabbed the end of the chain and yanked on it, pulling me toward him. As he reeled me in like a fish, I struggled. I tried pushing myself in the opposite direction, holding onto my bag as tightly as possible. But I couldn’t open my bag to get to the gun inside. With the chain connected to the handcuffs on my wrists, Old McBarebottom yanked my hands away from me. All I could do was hold onto the bag.

The bar patrons laughed as they watched the old man toy with me. He let the chain go loose so that I could run back a few feet, then he’d pull me back toward him. The guy was pretty strong for an old bastard. His naked body covered in muscles.

“Get her, Big Guy!” one of the patrons said to the bartender in a Texan accent, laughing and cheering him on. “Get her and hogtie her!”

Once the bartender was halfway down the chain, he used the slack as a whip. The cold metal slammed into my shoulder and chest as he swung it at me. The patrons screamed with glee.

The old Texan yelled out, “Whip her, Big Boy! Whip her good!”

The bartender hit me repeatedly with the back end of the chain, splitting open the skin on my back. The patrons cheered every time it struck. I cried out, but it was no use. There wasn’t anyone upstairs anymore. Nobody could hear me. I was all alone with these sick fucks. If only I could get my gun…

As the bartender whipped me, I had enough slack to move my hands. I let him strike me in the back three times as I dug through my bag, searching for the police gun. Each strike nearly knocked me to the ground, but I refused to go down. I had to get that gun and put a bullet in that old naked asshole or I’d never get out of there alive.

“Looking for this?” the bartender asked.

I turned around and looked at him. He was holding the police gun in the air. My mouth dropped open. My hands went limp and the bag fell to the floor.

“You think I’d actually leave you down here with a weapon?” Then he pointed it at me.

I was fucked. There was nothing I could do. I was chained, outnumbered, and my only defense was in the old bastard’s hand.

“You’ve got quite the bounty on your head, Miss Minneau,” he said. “Everyone in town is looking for you.”

That was the end of it. He knew who I was. He knew Porn Eyes. My situation was getting worse by the second.

He said, “I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw you walk right into my bar. I’m going to make quite a bit of money off your pasty freckled ass.”

I looked around the room. There had to be something else I could defend myself with. A rod of metal, a shard of glass, anything.

“But we’ve got some time before Mr. Norman comes to pick you up. We’re going to have a little bit of fun with you.”

There didn’t seem to be anything nearby to defend myself with. Just my fists, my teeth, and my fingernails, but they weren’t going to be enough.

The old man whipped me with the chain again, twice as hard as before. I turned away from him to avoid the blows, but he just whipped me in the back instead. I felt my skin split and tear against the linked metal. The bar patrons cheered at the first few strikes, but then their cheers softened into moans. When I glanced back at them, I saw they were touching themselves, masturbating as the old man struck me. The old woman was masturbating as well. These freaks weren’t just rapists. They were sadists. They probably paid Old McBarebottom to watch him torture women.

“Come to me, Little Kitty,” the old man said.

Then he came at me and grabbed my upper arms. I tried pushing him back, touching his clammy old flesh with my palms, punching him in his muscled chest. He was too strong. He picked me up, carried me across the room and threw me on the bed as the others hooted and hollered with delight. I kicked at him, aiming for his balls. He had to press the barrel of the gun to my forehead to get me to stop.

“You are a hellcat, aren’t you?” He licked his beard at me. “I can’t wait to hear you cry.”

But I wasn’t going to go out like that. He was going to have to kill me before I’d let the fucker do anything.

“You’re so fucking dead,” I told him, staring him right in the eyes. “You have no fucking idea how dead you are.”

He laughed at me, but my threat caused him to back up a little bit. Perhaps he wasn’t used to women talking to him like that. I had to keep it up. I had to figure out how to make him as scared of me as possible, even if I had to lie out my ass to do it. I was a good liar. I could bluff my way through any poker game in college. Confidence can convince people of even the most ridiculous bullshit.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked, not breaking eye contact. “Do you even know why there’s a bounty on my head?”

He smiled. “Doesn’t matter. All I know is that you’re going to make me a rich man.”

I laughed in his face. “My father put that bounty on my head. Do you know who my father is?”

He glanced back at his friends. They looked as confused as he did.

“Patrick Foley,” I said. “Ever heard of him?”

When I said the name, the bartender’s face turned white. The old bastard wasn’t smiling any more. Patrick Foley wasn’t my father, but he was a real person. He was the boss of the Irish mafia. He was also one of the most powerful people in the city. Nobody fucked with a guy like Foley. And Old McBarebottom was connected enough to know that.

“Holy shit…” one of the patrons said. They all knew the name.

I said, “The reason he put a bounty on my head was because I ran away from home. He wanted me to marry some asshole lieutenant of his and I refused. Then I took some of his money and left. He’s just trying to get me back. How do you think he’s going to react when he learns what you did to me?”

“Bullshit,” Old McBarebottom said, but he was obviously shitting his pants. “You don’t even have the same last name.”

I laughed at him. “I took on my mother’s maiden name after they divorced.”

He shook his head. “You lying cunt…” But the tone of his voice when he said cunt was like a whimper, like he was about to cry. My conviction to the lie was stronger than his ability to break through my bullshit.

“Do you want to risk it? Go ahead and continue and we’ll see what he does to you.”

Old McBarebottom looked at his friends. “Does Patty even have a daughter?”

They shrugged at him. While his attention was away from me, I searched around for something to use as a weapon. The only thing on the bed was the rotten severed arm of a previous victim.

“You’re so fucked.” I was laughing maniacally by that point. I was kind of getting swept up in the lie, taking it a little too far. “He’s going to kill you for what you’ve done to me. He’s going to cut your dick off and shove it down your throat.”

“Shut up,” the old man yelled.

“You think you’re going to get any of that bounty money? The only thing you’re getting is a shotgun up your ass.”

I kept laughing in his face and it only pissed him off even more.

“I said shut the fuck up, you lying bitch!” he placed the gun to my temple and pressed his face into mine.

Two inches away from me, I could smell his foul breath—a combination of pretzels and poor dental hygiene—and feel the tickle of his white beard hairs against my chin. But no matter how hard he tried to intimidate me, get me to cower in fear, I wouldn’t break my gaze.

“If you want to live your best bet is to let me go, then get out of town,” I told him.

“Or maybe I should just kill you and tell them you were never here?”

“But you already told them you had me,” I said. “My father will know my trail ended here, in your basement. You don’t think that will be suspicious?”

When Old McBarebottom broke his glare, looking away for just a second, I knew I had him. He sighed. He relaxed his trigger finger and lowered the police gun. He had no idea what I was doing behind my back, didn’t see it coming at all.

The old Texan was the only one who could see what I had in my hand.

“Look out!” he cried, but the warning only distracted McBarebottom more.

I drove the severed arm into the old man’s neck, bone-first. There was only a couple inches of bone poking out of the rotten flesh, but it was jagged enough to break the skin, strong enough to pierce the jugular. Then I went for the gun. I grabbed the old man by the wrist and twisted the barrel of the gun away from me.

He fired once at the floor as blood gushed out of his neck, the bullet missing my foot by millimeters. The force of the shell sprayed dirt and shrapnel at my toes.

“Motherfucker!” I screamed in his face as I twisted the bone into his throat.

When he no longer had the strength to resist, I took the gun from his hand and fired it at the group of naked men. A bullet hit one of them in the stomach and he fell to the ground. The others ran. They didn’t try to help their friends or fight back against me. They just took off, tumbling over each other out of the basement. The one they left behind moaned and held his stomach as blood poured into his crotch, drowning his shriveled little cock.

“Jesus Christ, you shot me!” cried the wounded bar patron, rolling in agony.

Old McBarebottom died in my lap. I spit in his face just as he drew his last breath. Then I threw him off of me and gathered up the chain into a ball. Walked across the basement and put a bullet in the wounded man’s skull. He held up his hands but didn’t even get a chance to beg for mercy before his brains blew out the back of his head.

“Sick fucks,” I said to the dead men.

I was worried the others were going to come back with guns or friends to help, but they never returned. The only person I had to worry about was Porn Eyes. He was on his way and I had to get out of there.

Upstairs, the bar was empty. Everyone cleared out in a hurry. There were still coats, wallets, and half-finished drinks on the tables. I found the keys to the handcuffs and was finally free. The pain in my wrists was even greater once the circulation flowed to my fingers. I washed all the blood from my body the best I could, not being able to see much of myself within the pixilated blur. Everything seemed to move really slowly. I couldn’t stop shaking.

Taking a random bottle of liquor from the shelf, I poured half of it down my throat. I couldn’t tell what it was inside the blur but it was sweet and cherry-flavored. I didn’t care what it was, I just needed something to drown the flavor of blood and soil out of my mouth.

Then I grabbed my stuff and left.

I was still naked as I stepped out onto the street, keeping my clothes stuffed into my purse. The only thing I kept in my hand was the police gun, but because of the pixilation nobody could see I was carrying it. The weapon could’ve been a cell phone for all anyone knew. With my free hand, I held my breasts up as high as I could and lowered my head down to them. That way my face would be hidden within the blurry cloud of pixilation. The censorship machines on the street would hide my identity.

Three blocks down, Porn Eyes passed me in his car. I walked casually down the sidewalk, pretending I was a normal nudist out on the town. He looked right at me for a second but still couldn’t tell who I was. I didn’t react. I kept moving. Then I turned a corner and ran.

By the time Porn Eyes realized I had left the bar, it would’ve been too late. I got into an auto-cab and took it to the Wire District. Paid for a room. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking and my legs bounced with anticipation, waiting for Sammy Smyth to arrive. I didn’t think melting with him was going to stop Porn Eyes from finding me, but it would slow him down. He would eventually figure out what I did, but he’d no longer recognize my face. I’d at least be able to get out of the city. Perhaps I could join with somebody else, then with another person, until I disappeared completely.

PART THREE

HYDRA HYUNA

Birthday

I woke up a new person. The memories of my lives as Sammy and Jupiter bled together. I was both of them, but neither of them. I was somebody new. Today was my birthday.

The melting chamber opened and I dragged myself out, toppling to the bond room floor. I felt like an alien baby expelled from a metal womb. My skin soft and tender and dripping with milky fluids. I felt fragile, like a newborn. My muscles were hardly strong enough to get me to my feet. My balance was off. I wasn’t used to my body yet. But I was in one piece, which was more than I expected. After discovering the dead conjoined corpses in the machine, I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t think the machine was operational enough to mold me correctly. Anything could have gone wrong. I got lucky.

Learning how to walk again was rather strange. My brain understood the concept of walking, but my body wasn’t used to it. I put one foot after the other, stepping slowly across the crispy carpet, balancing with my arms. Going back and forth from one wall to the other, over and over again, I eventually figured out my balance and was able to walk without falling. But it still felt odd, like I was in high-heeled shoes.

“You’ll get this,” I told myself. “Just focus.”

My voice was strange. I had a very high voice, higher than Jupiter’s. It was like a small girl’s. No, it was like the voice of an adult voice actor playing the part of a little girl in a cartoon. It was going to take some getting used to.

When I looked at myself in the mirror, my reflection was familiar. I didn’t look like anyone I’d ever met, but I still seemed familiar. I still seemed like me. My face was a perfect combination of Sammy and Jupiter. I had Jupiter’s narrow nose and wide mouth. Sammy’s dark eyes and high cheekbones. There was not much hair on my head, just a thin patch of wet fuzz. That would grow in later. But I appeared to have dark brown hair like Sammy. One strange thing was the color of my skin. I definitely didn’t have Jupiter’s pale skin, nor her freckles, but I didn’t have Sammy’s complexion either. I had a darker tone, a grayish coffee ice-cream color. Perhaps it had come from one of Sammy’s father’s components. I didn’t really know much about those men who made up my father (I mean Sammy’s father), but I doubt every single one of them was purely Caucasian. In the age of flesh-joining, race wasn’t as distinguishable as it once was.

I was a taller woman than Jupiter, but my breasts were a bit smaller. The nipples larger and darker. I didn’t have her curves either. But my penis was larger than Sammy’s. It was thicker and uncircumcised.

“Wait a minute…”

I was so used to having a penis that it didn’t strike me as odd until that moment.

“Why the fuck do I have a penis?”

I was supposed to be a woman. I shouldn’t have a penis. I’m a girl.

“What the fuck…”

When I lifted the penis, I saw there was a vagina beneath the scrotum. I had both sex organs. It wasn’t uncommon for something to go wrong during the bonding process. Some people were combined into mutants, where the bodies didn’t join together properly. There had been cases where people came out with two arms, a third leg, extra sex organs, and even two heads. This was bad. Our culture wasn’t accepting of mutants. This could be fixed by melting with somebody else, but nobody would ever want to join with a mutant except other mutants. There was a myth that certain people had a genetic flaw that rejected the joining processes. Their bodies refused to combine, like when the body rejects an implant. But the real reason for the mutation was a fault in the bonding machinery. The equipment was too old. It fucked up.

I wasn’t killed like the last couple who used this room’s machine, so I was thankful for that. But coming out a hermaphrodite was not good news at all. I needed to join with other people to escape the man who was after me. This could be a major setback.

“Piece of shit.” I kicked the bonding machine with my soft slimy feet.

At least the rest of my appearance was feminine. I didn’t have a mixture of genders. I was just a woman with a penis attached to her. Maybe I could just cut it off and nobody would know.

I grabbed my penis and imagined ripping it off right there. My body was in its most fragile state at that moment, making it easy to remove the organ. And I was also fast healing. Within the first few days of joining, my flesh could mend wounds and regrow damaged tissue much faster than regular humans. There was a chance I could just rip it off and the skin would grow together as though it never existed. But as I held the little tube of flesh in my hand, I couldn’t imagine actually going through with it. The pain would be excruciating. The male side of me begged me to reconsider.

“Later…” I said to my extra organ.

Then I put my clothes on. Jupiter’s pants didn’t fit anymore, so I had to wear Sammy’s. Luckily he brought a belt with him because the pants wouldn’t stay up otherwise. I wore Jupiter’s shirt and shoes, Sammy’s socks and coat. Even my outfit was a combination of my two components.

Inspecting myself in the mirror again, I concluded there was no way Porn Eyes would be able to recognize me like this. I was a completely new person.

The computer in the room blinked at me. It wanted to take my picture in order to put my new face and my new identification into the system. But that wasn’t going to happen. I picked up a chair and smashed the monitor. Then I ripped out the hard drive and crushed it under my heel. I wasn’t going back into the system. Nobody could know what I looked like. Hydra Hyuna didn’t exist.

I took the police gun from Jupiter’s bag and looked out the window. I couldn’t see the two vans that were out there earlier. I couldn’t see anything outside the hotel at all. Beyond the railing, it was all black. Perhaps a toxic smog cloud was encompassing the parking lot.

Pulling a gas mask over my face, I dug through Sammy’s pants for his keys. I’d be taking his car out of there. I’d leave the Wire District and head straight out of the city. I didn’t have a plan for what I’d do after that. I’d empty my bank account and just keep driving for as far as I could. Maybe find a long lost relative. I had grandparents all over the place, from all of my parents’ previous lives, who’d probably be interested in meeting their granddaughter for the first time. There’d be no way Porn Eyes would think I’d make that move. And even if he did, he’d have no idea which grandparents I’d choose. I had eight sets of grandparents on Sammy’s side, fifteen sets on Jupiter’s side, and dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins. I had family everywhere. I could definitely disappear for a while.

When I left the hotel room, I was hit by a blast of warmth, like I stepped outside into the hot summer sunlight. But it was nighttime and this time of year should’ve been cold. The hotel was just as dead as it was when I arrived. A deserted, haunted building that creaked and rattled in the hot wind. But it was possible I wasn’t alone. Those two vans Sammy saw in the parking lot could have been full of people who were looking for me. If I was lucky they were with the police. If I was luckier they were just random people come to use the bond hotel. Either way, I wanted to get out of there before they noticed me.

The air was breathable so I removed my gas mask. From inside the room it looked like the hotel had been swallowed by a large black toxic cloud, but outside it was actually clearer than it had been earlier. The blackness came from below. Some kind of shadow covering the streets. I would’ve left the mask on just in case that warmth I was feeling was some kind of radioactive glow coming from a nearby plant, but I needed my vision unobstructed. If anyone was there I needed to see them before they saw me.

I looked over the railing. I still couldn’t see the parking lot, but there didn’t appear to be anybody below me. I took the stairs down to the second floor, moving slowly, holding the police gun in my coat pocket with my finger on the trigger. The second floor was clear, so I continued down to the first. The lower I went, the harder it was to see. There wasn’t any light on the ground floor.

But about halfway down the staircase, I stopped in my tracks. The steps disappeared into a pool of black. At first, I thought it was just shadow, but there was movement inside the dark. Something was there. I took Sammy’s phone and turned on the flashlight feature. It was liquid. Black liquid that stretched across the parking lot, covering everything. A flood. It wasn’t raining. This wasn’t water. The black toxic sludge that was boiling up from the ground when Sammy arrived at the bond hotel that night had risen. It was like a massive lake had formed around the hotel while I was joining, stretching as far as my eyes could see. The first floor of the hotel has half-submerged. I could only see the roofs of the cars in the lot. There was no way I’d be able to drive out of there. I was trapped.

The water shifted and bubbled. It smelled like sewage and melted plastic. When I leaned down to get a closer look, a wave of heat hit my face. This was where the warmth issued from. The sludge was probably radioactive.

This was serious. The last time something like this happened in the Wire District, they shut down the whole city. Everyone had to be evacuated for a week so they could clean the mess up. And that toxic spill was a fraction of this. I knew right then that I was in deep shit. Getting hunted by a crazed killer was not my biggest problem anymore. If this shit was radioactive I had to get rescued within the hour.

The black fluid overtook another step while I stood there. The water level was rising. Whatever was pumping this stuff out of the ground wasn’t finished yet. I slid the gas mask over my face and went back upstairs. Walking along the second floor railing, I scanned the flood. It went all the way around the building, stretched as far as I could see. The whole Wire District could’ve been flooded with this stuff for all I knew. If that were the case it would be a long time before rescue would come. So few people ever went into the Wire District that they wouldn’t be looking for survivors.

“Shit…” I opened my phone and tried to call emergency services, but my phone wouldn’t connect. Whatever was in that fluid must’ve been messing with the signal.

A light flickered in a factory window across the black lake and wondered if anyone was over there. Perhaps the rare late night factory worker. Perhaps somebody who couldn’t leave due to the flood.

“Hey!” I cried across the lake. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

There were no signs of life coming from the window. Perhaps they couldn’t hear me. I used the flashlight feature on my phone and flicked it on and off, trying to get the attention of anyone who might be over there. But there was no response. No sign that anyone was anywhere for miles.

Black Flood

I heard a scream. It came from behind me and surprised me so much that my phone fumbled out of my fingers. Trying to catch it only knocked it through the bars of the railing. But just before the device plummeted into the fluid below, I caught it with my thumb and pinky.

“Help me!” somebody cried. A man’s voice.

I carefully pulled the phone through the bars as he cried for help.

“Is somebody there?” he called out.

Pounding noises echoed through the hotel. I followed his voice, trying to find where he was.

“Hello?” I called. “Where are you?”

He screamed back. “Oh, thank God! You’ve got to get me out of here!”

The banging noises continued.

“Where are you?”

I found the hotel room where the noises were coming from. There wasn’t an occupied sign on the door, but it was definitely his room. I tried my credit card first, sliding it through the door to pay for the room. But it was declined. My balance wasn’t high enough. I kicked the door, trying to break it in. But after recently joining, my bones and muscles weren’t strong enough. I slammed all my weight into it several times until it splintered open. Luckily the hotel was so old and run down or I never would’ve been able to break through.

“Hello?” I called into the room.

The room was empty. There wasn’t even any bonding equipment in it.

The man continued screaming, but was no longer intelligible. Once I stepped inside I was able to figure out where the voice was coming from. He wasn’t in the room. He was in the room below, on the ground floor.

“Oh my god…”

The first floor of the hotel was flooded with that toxic sludge and this guy was trapped down there with it. He was banging on the ceiling of his room, screaming, trying to break through the floor below my feet. I imagined he was inside of the fluid up to his elbows, probably getting boiled alive with every second he was submerged.

“Hold on,” I said.

As he attempted to break through the ceiling, I looked around the room for something to help him. There were only a couple of chairs. It was all I had. I grabbed one of them and slammed one of its metal legs into the floor above him. The cement crumbled with every strike, but I didn’t think it was possible to get to him in time. His screams faded. The banging sounds subsided. But I didn’t give up. I kept stabbing at the floor with the chair leg until it broke through. By then it was quiet. I couldn’t hear him anymore.

I looked through the hole I created, but it was too dark down there to see. When I shined my phone’s flashlight, all I saw was the black fluid. He was gone. Surely dead beneath the slime. All he left behind was the ripples on the surface of the murky water.

“Hello?”

I knew it was no use, but I didn’t take my eyes away from the hole. The light jittered in my hand. I couldn’t keep it steady. There wasn’t anything I could do.

Even though I wasn’t able to save the man on the first floor, it made me realize it was possible there were other people staying in the bond hotel. When Sammy arrived that night, he’d noticed several occupied rooms. There were at least the people who arrived in the two vans that were in the parking lot and perhaps others who took alternate transportation. I had to search the property. Perhaps I’d be able to get out of there if I wasn’t alone.

I searched for rooms marked occupied. There were three on the second floor. I knocked on the first door. No answer. If there were people in there they were likely inside the bonding machines. I had to warn them. If the flood rose any higher they’d likely wake up inside the black fluid like what probably happened to the guy downstairs. It took me ten minutes to break the door in. My shoulder felt like it was ready to dislocate. I really shouldn’t have been damaging my body while in such a fragile state, but I knew any wounds I caused would quickly heal.

There were clothes on the floor of the room. Two pairs. Both women’s clothes. Somebody was definitely there, in the bonding machine. But as I stepped further into the room, I noticed a thick coat of dust on everything. It had been a long time since the bonding. I opened the machine and found a dead woman lying in the metal tray. Like the conjoined corpses I discovered in my room, something must’ve gone wrong with the joining. The faulty machinery killed the woman in her sleep. But unlike the corpses in my room, the joining was mostly complete when she died. At least she was whole.

I had no idea why the bond hotel wasn’t condemned. People were dying in these machines. It wasn’t even slightly safe. How were these bodies not even discovered until now? How long would they have continued to go ignored had I never found them? Bond hotels were completely automated, but you’d think there’d be some kind of inspector checking out the machinery every now and then.

I felt kind of lucky when I saw her corpse. The same fate could’ve been mine. I made it out of that machine with only an extra penis that could easily be removed if I needed it gone.

I went to the next room. Breaking the door in was much easier than the last one, because the wood was already rotten and damaged. It was dark. There was no electricity inside. The machinery was old and quiet. Like the last room, the bonding chamber contained only a corpse. But this one was from long ago. Inside the bonding machine I found only bones. The flesh had decayed to dust. The skeleton was not human-shaped. It was a twisted blob of ribcage and spinal columns, coiled around itself like a snake.

My hope wasn’t very high as I went to the third room. The door was just as old and rotten as the last one. It was surely another tomb.

But there was something different about this one. The lights were on. The machines hummed and beeped. Looking at the computer screen, the bonding was still in process. Somebody was still in the machine. But when I scrolled through the text on the monitor, I saw the date and my hope evaporated. This joining took place early last year. Eighteen months ago.

An error message on the screen read: “Error 8266a1. Genetic processor undetected. Reboot and try again.”

I looked at the equipment by the bonding machine. The genetic processor was unplugged. I plugged it in and went back to the monitor.

“Genetic processor online. Would you like to continue?”

I clicked yes and the machine whirred to life. If the genetic processor wasn’t on, that meant the machine went into hibernation mode before the molding began. The humans inside were left in liquid form, stored like a jar of jelly.

When the molding process was complete, the lid of the bonding chamber opened. A figure was inside. I stepped closer. A mound of flesh pulsed and breathed within. It was alive, but it wasn’t exactly human. Something went wrong with the joining.

Hovering over the chamber, I pointed my gun at it. The thing had three pairs of arms, two pairs on each shoulder, one on each hip. Two of the arms were large and muscled. Gorilla arms. Its head was split into two faces. It had six pairs of nipples and two overly large penises. At first, I thought he had four penises, but two of them turned out to be baby-sized legs hanging from his pelvis. He was a mutant. I’d seen pictures of people this mutated before, but I’d never met one in person.

I pressed the gun to his head, wondering if I shouldn’t put him out of his misery. If his body was this deformed, I couldn’t imagine what his brain was like. It was common for severely mutated Compounds to be violent and deranged. Their brains conjoined into a twisted mess. They were lucky to survive at all. And those who survived often spent the rest of their lives in institutions.

The creature inhaled through its four nostrils, exhaled through its two mouths. Milky fluid dripping down its face.

Then it said, “Are you going to pull the trigger or just point it at me all day?

His voice came out of both mouths simultaneously, like two people speaking at once. One voice was deep, a large man’s voice. The other was higher, like the voice of a small boy.

I stepped back.

He opened his eyes and looked at me with the pair on his right face. “I have plenty of money if that’s what you’re after.” He pointed at his clothes that hung neatly on the coat rack. “My wallets are in there. Take what you want.”

I looked at his coat, then back at him. Despite his double-voice, he didn’t sound like a mutant. He spoke in the manner of an Oxford English Professor.

He sat up slowly and stretched all six of his arms. I continued pointing the gun at him.

“I assure you that I pose no threat. Your weapon is completely unnecessary.”

I lowered the gun.

He smiled a horrific split-mouthed smile. “Pretty clever mugging a guy after a joining, when he’s at his most vulnerable. And in the Wire District no less, where there’s no police around to stop you. But next time you decide to partake in such an affair, I highly suggest pinching the money and leaving before the joining process is complete. It’s much safer for both you and your target that way.”

I shook my head. “I’m not here to mug you.”

“Have I misread the situation?” He let out a small laugh. “I do apologize for my presumption. It appeared to be the most logical explanation under the circumstances.”

I shook my head. “No, it was just… Your appearance caught me by surprise.”

He looked down at his body. His current deformities did not seem to bother him in the slightest.

“Ah. Of course. That would’ve been my next speculation.” He pulled himself to his feet, but stopped halfway up. “Do you mind if I move freely? I would feel more comfortable if I were dressed.”

I nodded.

He went to his clothes and dressed himself. His shirt was designed for his body shape. There were six sleeves for his six arms. He wasn’t a mutant due to a mistake in the machinery. He was a mutant before the joining. It was common for mutants to melt with each other, because nobody else was willing to join with them.

As he dressed, the mutant spoke. “They say that the cure for bonding-generated disfigurements is to simply do it again. Join with another person and you’ll be reset back to normal.” He pulled on a pair of one-size-fits-all pants—overly baggy to fit the large members dangling down his thighs—and tightened the belt around his waist. “But after seventeen joinings, I remain the same. My genes change, my memories increase, but my mutations continue. I’ve only become more of a freak with every attempt. Yet I stubbornly continue to try.”

When he was completely dressed, I looked at the door, then back at the mutant. Despite his appearance, I felt safe with him. Perhaps it was the naïve Sammy part of me, but I felt like this freak was somebody I could trust.

“So what is the real reason for you barging in here with that weapon in your pretty little hands?” he asked.

“The gun is for protection.” I said. “I came here looking for help.”

“Help? Are you in danger?”

When he looked at me, I broke eye contact. I couldn’t look him in his freakish eyes. “Actually, we’re both in danger.”

He looked at me with a pleasantly curious expression, as though the idea of danger amused him.

“Explain,” he said.

I really didn’t know how to explain the situation to him. “We’ve got to get out of here. That stuff outside… We’re trapped.”

“Stuff? What stuff? What do you mean trapped?”

I looked at the doorway. “You should see for yourself.”

The large deformed man followed me outside. I led him to the railing and pointed at the parking lot. The fluid had risen almost all the way to the second floor. It was only a couple of feet down from where we stood.

“What is it that I’m looking at?” he asked.

“I don’t know exactly what it is. It seems like some kind of toxic spill. It happened while I was joining. When I woke up, the whole area was flooded with that stuff. I think it’s radioactive.”

He held out four of his hands to feel the warmth coming off of the black fluid. “It’s not radioactive. If it were, in this quantity, we’d already be dead. This is… something different.”

“Is it safe?”

“I wouldn’t try bathing in it.”

As we examined the fluid closely, a large bubble formed on top of the murk, expanded, and exploded. Before I could react, the mutant pulled me behind him with two of his massive arms, shielding me from the toxic sludge that splashed at us. He took the bulk of the spray like it was no big deal, like he didn’t care whether or not the fluid was dangerous. He seemed to have no problem protecting a complete stranger, even at the cost of his own wellbeing.

“Thanks…” I said.

He wiped his clothes against the railing to clean off most of the fluid. Then moved away from the sludge.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Have you tried calling for help?

“I can’t get a signal.”

“Is anyone else here?”

“There could be. I haven’t searched the upper floors yet.”

He nodded. “Let’s do that then. We need to gain higher ground.”

Before we went upstairs, the mutant went back to his room to gather his things. I followed him partially inside, but kept my eye on the level of the fluid outside. He went to the computer and finished the paperwork for his bonding, printing out his identification card and uploading his information to the system.

“This is unusual…” he said.

Something on the monitor confused him. He was more alarmed by this new information than he was the flood outside.

“Is this date correct?” he asked, pointing at the screen.

I forgot to tell him sooner. He’d lost eighteen months of his life while the machine was on hold. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like.

“I’m sorry…” I began.

“Almost two years have gone by?”

“There was an error with the gene processor. You’ve been stuck in that machine since last Spring.”

He didn’t say anything for a while, just stared at the screen as though looking at a man he wanted to tear apart with his bare hands. Two of his hands curled into fists. Something important must have happened while he was hibernating. Something was lost. An opportunity, maybe. A child who needed him. A dying friend to whom he didn’t get to say goodbye.

I didn’t interrupt his quiet fury. He deserved a few moments to process his situation. To some people, losing eighteen months could mean nothing. To others, those eighteen months could’ve meant the loss of everything that mattered to them.

When he finally spoke, he said, “We haven’t been properly introduced.” Even with his inhuman double-voice, I could hear how upset he was. I could tell he was holding back tears. “What should I call you?”

“I’m Saupiter—” I shook my head, answering by habit. Somehow I wasn’t thinking of myself as somebody new. I still felt like Sammy and Jupiter. “I mean Hydra. My name is Hydra now.”

“Hydra. The many-headed dragon…” The mutant nodded his head. “A very suiting name for a Compound.”

“What about you?”

“The name in this computer doesn’t matter.” He turned the monitor off. “I never remember all these names anyway. I’ll surely have another one in a few weeks.”

“Then what do I call you?”

“Call me Gary.”

“Gary?”

He nodded.

“Why Gary?”

“Gary is the part of me I like most. Of all the people I’ve combined with, Gary was the only one who mattered.”

“Who was he? Somebody important?”

He shook his head. “Not to this world. Just to the people who knew him.”

I’d heard that Compounds sometimes identify more with one of their past identities than others, but it was usually because that person was the most significant. A famous artist. A brilliant scientist. A political leader. A famous actress. It was hard not to feel this way, because everyone around you still thinks of you as that person no matter how many times you join.

“Let’s get upstairs while we still can,” Gary said.

I nodded and led the way.

The third and fourth floors had more occupied rooms than the second. Five on the third and six on the fourth. With his massive strength, Gary was able to break down the doors without much effort. Only two of them had malfunctioned machinery that killed their occupants. Eight of them were still processing. We left them alone, hoping they’d finish before the sludge rose to the third floor.

On the fourth floor, while Gary was smashing open doors, two men stepped out of one of the rooms wearing robes and gas masks.

“What the hell is going on out here?” one of them yelled, pulling off his mask. He was a barrel-chested man with a cop haircut. “Are you freaking nuts?”

They hadn’t joined yet. Somehow they had been in their room the whole time, unaware of what had been happening around them.

Gary stepped out of the room he had just broken into, showing himself to the two robed men. In a calm tone, he said, “I apologize for the disruption, but we have a bit of a situation here.”

When the guy with the cop haircut saw Gary, his voice trembled. He took a step back and lowered his eyes. “Yeah, well keep it down, would ya. We’re trying to merge here.”

The smaller man cowered in the doorway. He refused to take off his gas mask.

“You’ve been in there this whole time?” I asked the two men. “You’ve just been sitting in there?”

Cop Haircut pointed at the cowering man. “I’ve been trying to convince this pussy to join with me all day. He finally fucking agreed to it until you pricks started banging on doors out here. He thought you were psychopaths.”

“I assure you, we’re not psychopaths,” Gary said. But with his deformed appearance and horrific double-voice, the two men didn’t seem to believe him.

“Didn’t you hear me calling for help?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Yeah, I heard somebody whining out here. Was that you? I figured you were in trouble or something.”

“Then why didn’t you come outside to help?” I asked.

The coward stepped forward. His voice muffled behind his gas mask as he said, “I wanted to. He wouldn’t let me.”

Cop Haircut gave his joining partner a dirty look. “It’s the fucking Wire District. You don’t get involved out here. You just get in and get out. If someone’s in trouble then it’s their own problem.”

Gary stepped forward and both the men stepped back. “Well, we’re all in trouble now. Our problem is your problem.”

Cop Haircut sneered. “What the fuck are you talking about, Ugly? Your problem’s got nothing to do with me.”

The man shouldn’t have called Gary Ugly. The mutant was obviously somebody who didn’t let anyone call him names.

Gary just grabbed Cop Haircut by the shoulder and pulled him close to his face. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t comment on my physical irregularities. I’m very sensitive about it.”

Cop Haircut squirmed and looked away as though Gray was breathing acid into his eyes. “Yeah, sure, Pal. Forget about it.”

When Gary felt the guy was properly put in his place, he led him to the railing and showed him the situation.

“What, the flood?” asked Cop Haircut. “Is that all? We drove through it on the way in. Big deal.”

I said, “It’s not a normal flood. That stuff is some kind of toxic waste.”

Cop Haircut laughed at me. “It’s not toxic waste.”

“Well, it’s not water.”

“It’s probably just sewage or something. Now can you leave us alone so we can join already?”

“You still want to join?” the coward asked. “Shouldn’t we get help?

Cop Haircut rolled his eyes. “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. Come on.”

Before the two men could return to their bonding room, Gary got in their way.

“It’s not safe to combine under these conditions,” Gary told them.

“The machines in this place aren’t safe under any condition,” I said. “I found five dead bodies in bonding chambers downstairs who’ve been rotting down there for God knows how long.” I pointed at the mutant. “Gary here was stuck in his machine for eighteen months. And my process caused a…” I looked down at my crotch and then back to them. “A mutation.”

I didn’t want to explain exactly what my mutation was, so I left it at that.

Gary added, “The machines are almost certainly less stable with this chemical spill flooding the building. We are also unsure just how high the flood level is going to rise. You’ll likely die if you attempt to join now.”

“Yeah, well I’m willing to take that risk,” said Cop Haircut.
“And your partner’s willing to take the risk as well?” Gary asked.

Cop Haircut looked at the cowardly man and spoke for him. “Yeah, he is.” But with his eyes he told his bonding partner, “You better not chicken out.”

“Very well,” Gary said. “Go ahead then.”

The mutant walked into the hotel room, stepped behind the bonding chamber, and punched a hole right through the machine. Smoke and sparks sprayed from the device, as Gary pulled his monstrous fist out of the twisted metal.

As he passed the two men on his way out of the room, he said, “Good luck with that.”

The guy with the cop haircut freaked out. He didn’t care that Gary was three times his weight in muscle mass alone. “Who the fuck do you think you are, Motherfucker? We already paid for our joining. Six thousand each. That’s twelve thousand bucks you owe me, asshole.”

Behind him, the coward said, “Actually, I’m the one who paid for both of us, so he doesn’t really owe you…” But he spoke so meekly that nobody bothered to listen to him.

“I just saved both of your lives,” Gary said, staring the man in the eyes. “The way I see it, you’re the one who owes me.”

Cop Haircut looked away. He had no choice but to let it go. I could tell he wanted to knock Gary out for what he did, but the asshole didn’t have the guts to try. He obviously wasn’t used to being around guys who were larger than he was.

Processing

We split up. Gary stayed with the asshole on the third floor. I went up to the fourth floor with the cowardly one. He still wouldn’t take off his gas mask.

“You don’t need that,” I said, pointing at the mask on his face. “Take it off. Save it in case gas clouds come in later.”

The man obeyed, removing his mask to reveal a boyish face despite being in his thirties. His hair was baby blond. His cheeks chubby and red. He obviously didn’t want to take off the mask but did it because I told him to. He seemed like the kind of guy who always did what he was told.

He introduced himself as Stewart. Then he said the guy with the cop haircut was named Mike. He obviously didn’t like Mike.

“He’s a mechanic,” Stewart said about him. “He was my neighbor’s boyfriend for a while. He always came over to my house whenever they got in a fight, watched my television, sometimes slept on my couch. When they broke up, he still kept coming over. Usually to borrow money or drink my beer.”

We went to the room where a joining was about to finish. The others on the floor would still be molding for another hour. While browsing the monitor, it showed the person was a woman named Pixie. A strange name to give yourself, though probably not any stranger than Hydra. We waited to greet her once her bonding was complete, sitting in chairs across from each other.

I asked Stewart, “So why did you agree to join with that asshole, anyway?”

Stewart lowered his head, ashamed of himself. I could tell he was uncomfortable talking about it. He knew better than anyone that Mike was the kind of asshole you didn’t choose to melt with.

“I didn’t want to…” He spoke the words quietly, as though worried Mike might be close enough to hear him.

“Then why’d you agree?

“Mike can be… pushy when he wants something.”

“So? Joining’s not like lending somebody your car. It’s about sacrificing yourself to become something better. That guy doesn’t seem like he’d be much of a benefit to you. He’d just hold you back.”

His tone of voice became defensive and desperate. “Not necessarily. He’s athletic. He’s good with cars. He has confidence. He has a lot of things I lack.”

“Big deal. A lot of people have those qualities. You can find better people to join with.”

He lowered his eyes again. “I know…”

“So why did you agree?’

“He said he was in a tight spot. He lost his job. He couldn’t afford rent. He didn’t want to join with me either, but he doesn’t have a choice.”

“So you did it out of pity?”

“Not exactly. I refused many times, but he became… aggressive.”

“So he bullied you into joining with him?”

He was quiet for a moment. Then said, “Kind of…”

I’d heard of this type of thing happening from time to time. Low life thugs who couldn’t join with anyone worthwhile would find somebody smart or successful and force them to agree to a joining. They’d bully, threaten, even physically assault their target until he or she finally gave in. And once bonded, there couldn’t be any charges brought against him. The bully and the victim would become the same person. There was nothing that could be done. The only payback the bully would receive was the memory of the experience from the victim’s point of view.

When I was in college, as Jupiter Minneau, I knew a woman named Beth who combined with her abusive boyfriend. He wasn’t exactly physically abusive, didn’t hit her or anything. But he was emotionally abusive. His name was Steve, I think. A complete asshole who treated her like shit, made her feel pathetic and wouldn’t let her do anything without his permission. Sometimes Steve wouldn’t even let her go to class if he wanted her to clean his dorm room or go out and get him a burrito. When he forced himself on her after drunken keg parties, she refused to admit that it was rape. She wasn’t comfortable with the things he wanted her to do to him, but even when she protested he wouldn’t listen to her. He’d force her to do them anyway. Her friends warned her about him. Even I warned her about him and we weren’t even that close. But she was too scared to do anything about it, too scared to even say anything negative about their relationship. Beth tricked herself into thinking she was in love with him, because it was easier that way. But Steve, he knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew that if she ever told anybody how he treated her that he would be in deep shit.

So he convinced her to join with him. If they were one person he figured he would be safe. It took weeks of harassment before she gave in. Everyone told her not to do it, she told herself not to do it, but she eventually did it anyway. They became a male named Charles. For a while, Charles seemed to be just another version of Steve. He acted like him, partied like him, treated women just like him. There was no sign of Beth in him whatsoever. It was as though she just disappeared. Steve absorbed her, erased her, and was able to start over as a new person. It seemed like he got away with all the horrible things he’d done. But then Charles stopped hanging around with Steve’s friends. He stopped hanging around with anyone. He became depressed. The memory of how Steve treated Beth was all he could think about. The last I heard, Charles spent the rest of his life trying to be a better person than Steve was, trying to make up for what he did to his female half.

I told Stewart, “Joining with Mike will make him a better person, but you have to think of what’s best for you.”

Stewart didn’t say anything more about it after that. He already knew I was right, but it was all over his face that he didn’t have the backbone to refuse Mike, or probably anyone for that matter.

When the bonding machine finished processing, Stewart and I stood up from our seats and approached, waiting to greet the new Compound Person. When the machine’s lid opened, a petite woman lay in the chamber. Her bony body covered in goo. Wet newborn blond hair flat to her head. She didn’t appear to be breathing, but she looked alive and healthy. The bonding process was a complete success. No mutations.

“Is she alive?” Stewart asked.

“I don’t know…”

We peered into the machine, leaning closer to the woman, trying to figure out whether she was alive or dead. Then, just as I held out my hand to her nostrils to feel for breath, she awoke with a gasp. Stewart and I jumped back as droplets of goop splashed us in the face. The woman arched her back and let out a long moan. But it wasn’t a moan of pain or anguish, it was a moan of pleasure.

“Oh, fuck yeah…” the girl yelled, then cooed in satisfaction.

As I rubbed chunks of jelly from my face, I watched the girl writhe inside of the machine, her eyes shut tight, rubbing her new body, caressing her small perky breasts and concave stomach.

“Mmmmm… yesss…” she moaned in ecstasy as she touched herself.

She didn’t realize we were in the room with her. I cleared my throat, trying to let her know that she wasn’t alone. But she continued as though she were in her own sexual world.

“What’s wrong with her?” Stewart asked.

I shook my head at him. When I was Jupiter, I knew a couple of people like her. “She’s a deviant.”

“A deviant?”

“She has a bonding fetish.”

There were plenty of people out there who bonded with others for the sole purpose of sexual fulfillment. They were addicted to it. They bonded with anyone they could find, as frequently as they could afford it. There was a whole underground culture for bonding addicts to meet others with the fetish.

When the woman opened her eyes, she looked at me and smiled. Then she grabbed me by the wrist and tugged on me, trying to pull me into the machine with her.

“I want to go again,” she said. “Come on, melt with me. Please…”

In her weakened state, I easily pulled out of her grip and stepped away.

She lay back in the machine and rubbed the greasy pools of goo against herself, moaning, “I want to go again and again and again…”

Stewart was too embarrassed to look at her. He’d never met a woman with a bonding fetish before. She probably wasn’t even a real woman. Most people with the bonding fetish were men who decided to become female even when they were bonding with other men. Then they would bond with other women who were previously men. There were some deviants who were born female, but it was pretty rare. Most women were smarter than that. They knew better than to throw their lives away for a brief moment of sexual pleasure.

I took the girl’s robe from a hook on the wall and held it out to her. “Get out. We have a situation here. We need to talk.”

But she just blocked me out of her head and touched herself, drunk on fleshly bliss.

“This is serious,” I said. “Let’s go.”

By the time she finally got out and Stewart and I helped her weak twitching body to a chair, she was too blissed out to really grasp the situation we were in. I told her everything, about the black fluid flooding the streets, about how we were trapped there and needed help, but the words just went in one ear and out the other. It was like trying to talk to somebody who was stoned out of their mind. Her eyes half-open, a dumb smile on her face, a dull glowing sensation spread across her body.

“Cool deal,” she said, pretending she was actually listening to what I just told her. Then she looked me up and down, eyeing my body. She flashed me a seductive smile and said. “You’re fucking hot, you know that. I’d do anything to melt with you.”

I shook my head at her and turned away. Even though she was in woman’s flesh, she was definitely a guy. Fucking creep.

I turned to Stewart. “Let’s go see if any of the other machines are finished processing.”

He nodded and put his gas mask over his face.

“Wait here,” I told Pixie.

But before we got to the door, the power shut off. The lights went dark. The computers went black. The machines hummed to a stop.

I opened the door. The whole block was dark. The flood had killed the electricity.

“What’s going on?” Stewart asked.

I looked at him and said, “Shit. We have to get to the others.”

There were still other people in the machines, still in the middle of processing. With the power outage, they were going to die.

“Come on.” I grabbed Stewart by the arm and raced out of the room. The next person to finish processing wouldn’t be complete for another twenty minutes. Another had a full hour. Even if their bonding wasn’t complete, they might still be alive.

In the next room, we heard the sound of pounding against metal. Someone was inside of the machine, trying to get out. We propped the door open so that the moonlight would brighten the room. Then we went inside.

“Help me,” I told Stewart, trying to pry the lid off of the bonding chamber.

As we pulled on the lid, the person inside whimpered and screamed, banging to get out. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It sounded like both combined. The lid was locked. We couldn’t get it open.

“We need a crowbar,” I said.

Stewart looked around the room. “I don’t have a crowbar!”

“Well, get something. They’re going to suffocate.”

As Stewart searched the room, I kicked the machine. The person inside kept banging on the inside of the lid. They were panicking, as though they thought they’d been buried alive.

“Keep calm,” I said. “We’re doing everything we can to get you out.”

Stewart looked everywhere but he couldn’t find anything strong enough. He broke the towel rack off the wall and held up the hollow aluminum tube, but there was no way it was going to help.

“Give it a shot,” I said, even though I knew it would be useless.

I continued kicking against the bonding chamber as Stewart attempted stuffing the towel rod beneath the lid. It was too wide to fit. He had to stomp on one end and bang it against the floor until it flattened enough to get it under the lid. Then he tried to pry open the hatch.

We managed to get it loose. I’m not sure if it was Stewart’s towel rod, my kicking, or the person inside pushing against the metal, but we succeeded. When the lid popped open, a fleshy mass rolled out of the machine and spilled onto the floor. It was human-shaped and was alive, but incomplete. It had no hair, no nose, lips or eyelids. Its flesh was like wet clay and lacked pores and details.

“Help me,” the thing cried, lifting its webbed fingers at me. Its mouth just a soggy hole in the center of its face.

Stewart wouldn’t go near the thing. His face was locked in panic.

“What do we do?” he asked. “Can we help him?”

I stepped away from the unfinished man. “He’s going to die unless we can get the bonding machine working again.”

“How do we do that?”

I looked at Stewart and shook my head. There was nothing we could do.

The thing rolled over on its back and convulsed, breathing rapidly and squealing in an inhuman tone. We watched it die. It took five minutes and the thing did not go peacefully. It thrashed and jerked, its pudding-like flesh bubbled and dripped. Half of its skin slid off into a puddle on the floor. Then it froze up and went quiet. Its dying breath a short puff in and out, like a hiccup. And he was dead. Whoever he was, however many people he was combined with, he was gone.

“Let’s collect the others,” I told Stewart who was cowering in the doorway, holding his gas mask tight against his face. “We need to figure out how we’re getting out of here.”

“What about the people in the other machines?” he asked.

“There’s no point. They’re all dead.”

Black Night

We gathered in the waiting room on the fourth floor. Gary and Mike managed to save two people from the processing chambers before the power went out. A young lawyer named Cecil and a military man named Dave. Both Dave and Cecil were more serious about the situation we were in than the others we found. They had more to live for than the rest of us. They didn’t sit around arguing. They wanted to get organized and make a plan.

“I’ve got three kids at home,” Cecil said. “I’m not dying here.”

“I’ve got kids, too,” Dave said. “Thirteen of them. All from my previous incarnations.”

Dave was a career soldier. In the military, they rarely allowed grunts to melt with others. This was one of the few careers that discouraged bonding among new recruits, because they were more interested in keeping their numbers high. Officers, on the other hand, were the opposite. When soldiers were promoted to higher ranks, they were ordered to bond with older officers on the verge of retirement. Putting experienced minds in the bodies of young soldiers was the new way for the American military. Dave was a +5 Compound. He was a young soldier who was promised the rank of Captain if he combined with a +4 Major. He had the military experience of three Majors and a Colonel in the body of a twenty-year-old. And he was now a father of thirteen, four of his kids twice his age.

Cecil was a +18 Compound Lawyer. But his three children were still young. Most of his parts bonded when they were just out of law school. His latest bond was between a young +4 who was dying of bone cancer, who was married with three kids, and a +13 who was a depressed, lonely lawyer who had nobody in his life but those he worked with. Combining would cure what ailed the other. If only he’d chosen a different location for the bonding.

“Why would a lawyer choose this bond hotel anyway?” Mike asked Cecil. “You could afford one of the upscale hotels downtown.”

“This bond hotel was the most affordable,” Cecil said. “I don’t like to waste money.”

“What are you Jewish or something?”

Cecil didn’t like that comment. “What if I am Jewish? So what?”

Mike laughed. “I knew it. No lawyer would choose this piece of shit hotel, unless he was a fucking penny-pinching Jew.”

Even though Mike was twice his size, Cecil didn’t let the comment slide. He got into his face and said, “Insult my people one more fucking time. I’ll break your smug little jaw.”

Mike was about to stand up to his threat, but one look in Cecil’s eyes and he changed his mind quick. You couldn’t push around a +18. Cecil had the experience, the confidence, and the backbone of nineteen different men. Although he didn’t look like much physically, especially with his weak post-bond muscles, he was still an imposing figure. Mike was just a meek little child compared to him.

Dave stepped between them. “Let’s focus on the situation at hand. We need to figure out how to get help.”

“Our phones don’t work here,” I told him. “I already tried yelling for help at the surrounding buildings. They seem to be deserted. There’s nobody around for miles.”

“Somebody will find us eventually, won’t they?” Stewart asked. “We should start a signal fire on the roof. Wait for help to come.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Gary said.

When Gary spoke, nobody in the room acknowledged him. He was a mutant, a deformed monster. His strange double-voice made their skins crawl. Everyone but Pixie, who was too busy exploring her new body in the corner, tried to block him out of their minds.

“There’s never been a spill this size before,” I said. “Once the authorities learn about this, they’re going to be more focused on evacuating the city than searching this area. Nobody lives on this side of town. They won’t expect us to be here.”

“But they’ll still need to survey the area by helicopter,” Cecil said. “A signal fire would likely get their attention. We should go to the roof.”

“There might also be a backup generator up there,” Gary said. “It would be useful if we had power.”

Again, nobody paid attention to the monster in the corner. I was the only one who looked at him. “If there was a backup generator, wouldn’t it have switched on by now?”

“Not necessarily,” Gary said.

Dave nodded, glancing at Gary for a minute and then turning back to the others.

“Any other suggestions?” he asked.

The seven of us looked at each other. The only one who had a suggestion was Mike.

“Fuck this,” Mike said. “We should just swim for it.”

“In that stuff ?” I asked. “It’s suicide. We don’t know what it is.”

“That’s the point,” Mike said. “We don’t know what it is. It could just be dirty water or sewage. As long as you don’t drink any of it, you’ll be fine.”

“Trust me, it’s not just sewage,” I said. “It radiates heat. It’s got to be toxic.”

Mike frowned at me like I just stepped in dog shit. “There could be all sorts of reasons why it’s hot. That doesn’t make it radioactive. And even if it is toxic, it might be safe to swim in.”

“He’s got a point,” Dave said.

I was shocked anyone would actually agree with the asshole.

Dave continued, “We should test the water. If it’s safe enough I would be willing to volunteer to swim for help. It would be the quickest way out of here.”

I shook my head at him. “Even if it’s not deadly, the fluid is thick like oil. It won’t be easy to swim in. And the flood stretches for at least a mile in every direction. You wouldn’t be able to make it to safety, especially in your weakened state.”

“My strength will return soon enough,” Dave said. “I wouldn’t go unless it was a last resort.”

“I bet I can make it,” Cecil said. “A previous version of me was an Olympic swimmer.”

But Dave wouldn’t let him. “If anybody goes, it’s going to be me.”

“Then I’ll go with you,” he said.

“This is insane,” I said to them. “Once you see the stuff, you’ll see what I mean. Nobody’s swimming anywhere. That shit will kill you.”

“Let’s check it out then,” Dave said.

The fluid was about six feet higher than the last time I’d seen it. If it kept rising, the entire hotel would be submerged by morning.

All of them but Pixie had seen the stuff already, at least from a distance. But only Gary and I had checked it out close-up. I figured Dave would completely change his mind about swimming for help the second he saw it, but he wasn’t nearly as bothered by the sight of the stuff as I’d expected. In fact, he didn’t even feel the need to wear his gas mask.

“It’s not that toxic,” Dave said.

“What?” I cried, holding my mask firmly over my face. “You’ve got to be kidding. Look at that stuff.”

“I’m not saying it’s safe, but if it was as toxic as you explained then we wouldn’t be able to get this close. It would cause our eyes and skin to burn. We wouldn’t be able to breathe. This isn’t so bad. It’s not even combustible.” He lit a lighter near the surface and the fluid didn’t ignite. “See?”

I jumped back when he held out the flame of his lighter. I couldn’t believe he did that. If he’d been wrong he might have just killed us all.

“What is it then?” I asked.

“Not sure,” Dave said.

Cecil stepped forward, removed his tie and dipped it into the fluid. When he pulled it out, he examined the liquid.

“It’s bonding fluid,” he said.

“Bonding fluid?” Stewart asked.

“Among other things,” Cecil continued.

I took another look. It didn’t seem like bonding fluid to me.

“During the bonding process, nearly fifty gallons of bonding fluid is used. But it’s not recycled. It’s dumped into tanks underground. But it’s not only bonding fluid. Much of it is dissolved human flesh.”

“Human flesh?” Stewart cried.

Cecil explained, “When two people become one, there’s a lot of excess tissue that has to be disposed of. ”

“That can’t be what this stuff is,” I said. “There’s so much of it.”

Gary stepped in and explained, “The tanks probably haven’t been emptied in decades. You saw the state of some of the equipment here. Nobody maintains this place.”

Cecil said, “Thirty years of neglect, with five to ten thousand joinings per year, fifty gallons of bonding fluid and fifty gallons of human waste per joining, that’s as much as twenty or thirty million gallons of waste that’s been trapped underground for all this time. Mixed with ground water and sewage and who knows what else. The only thing that’s shocking is that it didn’t happen sooner.”

We weren’t sure if he was right, but he was a +18. He was definitely the smartest of all of us. It was the best hypothesis available.

“So how safe is it to swim in?” Dave asked.

“It’s a biohazard,” Cecil said. “Full of disease and bacteria. And you don’t want to swim in bonding fluid. Not for long anyway.”

“What’s so dangerous about bonding fluid?” Mike asked.

“It dissolves tissue,” Cecil said. “This stuff is probably watered down, but I wouldn’t swim in it for longer than five minutes.”

Dave nodded his head. “Then it’ll have to be a last resort, if we can’t signal help from the roof.”

We all agreed. Though no matter what Cecil said, no matter how much knowledge he had in his super brain, I didn’t buy it. There was something seriously wrong with this flood. No way would I voluntarily swim through it.

On the roof, there was a backup generator. But it was old and rusted out. It probably hadn’t worked in years.

“That thing is toast,” Mike said.

But Gary wasn’t so easily discouraged. “I think I could get it working, if it has gas in it.”

As Gary investigated the generator, Stewart and Mike started a signal fire using broken furniture for fuel. Pixie helped, but she mostly just got in the way. She seemed more interested in getting the generator working than signaling for help. All she wanted to do was go back into the bonding machine with somebody else.

“So all the other buildings are empty?” Dave asked me.

Cecil, Dave and I stood on the edge of the roof, scanning the factories around us.

“There were some lights in the windows of that building over there before the power went out,” I said, pointing at the place I had called out to earlier. “But no sign of anybody in there.”

“Most of these factories are automated,” Cecil said. “Like this bond hotel. Nobody actually works in them.”

“I doubt that’s completely true,” Dave said. “Nothing is completely automated.”

Cecil said, “The machines need to be maintained and resupplied, but only once or twice a month. Besides, if anyone was in any of these buildings they’d be in the same boat that we are. They’d need our help just as much as we need theirs.”

“Not necessarily,” Dave said. “They could have other ways to communicate with the outside world than we do. Alarms that contact emergency services in case of fires or chemical spills.”

“Perhaps.”

I interjected, “Also, the owners of these factories are probably notified automatically if the machines shut down. They’ll probably send somebody out to check on the situation.”

“But they won’t get far in this flood,” Cecil said. “Same goes for emergency services. Unless they come by helicopter, they’re not going to find us.”

As Cecil spoke, I saw something shining from the roof of the building across the street. I squinted my eyes. It twinkled on and off.

“What’s that?” I asked the two men.

They looked in the direction I pointed. The light flashed again.

“Is somebody over there?” Cecil asked, stepping closer to the edge.

“It looks like somebody’s trying to signal us,” I said.

When Dave saw it, he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. There would be more of a pattern to it. That looks like… light reflecting off of the scope of a sniper rifle.”

Then he laughed at the absurd idea of there being a sniper up there. But when he said that, it made me step back. I was still being hunted by Porn Eyes and every hired killer in town. There was a very good reason for there to be a sniper up there.

“Uhh, guys…” I said. “I think we should get off the roof.”

“What?” Cecil asked, turning to me.

“There’s something I think you should know about me.”

It just sounded like a pop. Like somebody flicked a plastic straw against a tabletop. Then blood gushed out of a hole in Cecil’s chest.

He looked down at his white dress shirt as it turned red. “What the…”

Then he fell to his knees.

“He’s been shot!” I said.

But Dave could already tell. Despite the unlikely probability of there being a sniper in the deserted Wire District, he jumped into action without a second thought.

“Get down!” he yelled, grabbing me by the waist and throwing me down just as another bullet whizzed over our heads.

The others just stood around the fire, confused about what was going on.

“There’s a shooter on the roof,” Dave said. “Take cover.”

It took another shot, right through Stewart’s gas mask he held in his left hand, before they understood the situation. They jumped behind the generator and huddled together.

“What the hell is going on?” Mike yelled, using Gary’s muscled body as a human shield. “Who the hell is shooting at us?”

I knew who was shooting at us. Or at least I knew why they were shooting at us. They were after me. Somehow they tracked me to this bond hotel. They didn’t know who I was, though. They didn’t know what I looked like. If Porn Eyes knew I was at a bond hotel then he knew I could have been anyone. He knew I might not have even been female anymore.

Cecil coughed and shivered, holding his chest. He was still alive, but just barely.

“Get off the roof,” Dave said.

As I crawled to the others, Dave went for Cecil. He wrapped his arms around his chest, putting pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. Then he dragged the hemorrhaging lawyer to safety.

No more shots were fired. We were all able to crawl to the other side of the roof and get down the ladder. On the south side of the building, we were safe. Whoever the shooter was, he was just as trapped as we were. And there was about four hundred feet of toxic fluid between us. As long as we stayed away from that side of the building we’d be safe. The only problem was that the roof was off limits. Signaling for help from up there was no longer an option.

Dave carried Cecil to the fourth floor waiting room and laid him across a couch, keeping pressure on the wound.

“What the hell was that?” Stewart yelled. “Why would somebody be shooting at us?”

“Why the fuck do you think?” Mike said. “This is the Wire District. Crazies get away with all sorts of shit out here.”

As they yelled at each other, Dave did everything he could to help Cecil.

“Hang on,” Dave said. “Somebody’s bound to spot the fire on the roof. Just hang on.”

Cecil wasn’t buying it. There were tears in his eyes.

“I’m a +18,” Cecil cried. “I can’t die. Don’t let me die.”

“You’re not going to die,” Dave said.

Cecil shook his head. “Somebody has to join with me. You have to get the machines running. Get the generator working. I’ll survive if I go through the bonding process.”

“We can’t get the generator working,” Dave said. “If anyone goes up there they’ll be shot.”

“Somebody has to,” he said. His voice wheezed as he spoke. Blood leaked down his chin. The bullet was probably still in his lungs. “I’m not just one person. I’m nineteen people. If I die then nineteen people die with me. Everything will have been for nothing. You have to join with me.”

But Dave didn’t know what to tell him.

Gary stepped forward. “I think I can get the generator running. It’s not missing any parts. It’s got enough gas. All I need is an hour.”

“You can’t go up there, you’ll be shot,” Dave said.

Gary didn’t back off. “I’m willing to risk it.”

Cecil looked at me and held out his hand. “Join with me.”

I didn’t know why he was looking at me like that. There was no way I was going to join with that guy. Not even to save him. Even if the machines were safe or if we weren’t in such a dangerous situation, the last thing I wanted to do was become a lawyer with three kids.

“I’ll join with him,” Pixie said. “Let me join with him. I volunteer.”

But Cecil didn’t seem interested in anyone but me.

“I’ll go see what I can do,” Gary said.

As the large mutant left the waiting room, Dave yelled at him, “You can’t—”

But Gary was gone before he could finish.

“Somebody stop him.” Dave looked at me. “Stop him.”

I nodded and went for the door, but before I left the room Cecil went into shock. There wasn’t anything anyone could do, even if the bonding machines were functional. He bled out and died right there.

His last words were, “It couldn’t have been for nothing.” His breath rapid, hiccupping between words. “All those men gave their lives to make me. It couldn’t have been for nothing. There has to be a point to it all.”

Then he was gone.

I stopped Gary before he went up to the roof. I told him it was too late. Then I brought him back. It was time for me to face the music. I had to tell everyone who the shooter was really after. The Jupiter in me knew that they’d likely turn on me if I told them the truth, but the Sammy in me wasn’t going to lie to them. He would rather they throw me to the wolves than have one more person die because of me.

“I’m a witness to the governor’s murder,” I told the group, as they covered Cecil’s face with his coat. “There’s a man, perhaps several men, coming after me. They want me dead.”

They looked at me. Their faces blank, not sure whether to be scared, angry, or skeptical. Even Gary had that look on his grotesque double-face.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Dave asked.

“I did,” I said. “They were killed.”

“All of them?” Stewart asked.

“The only ones I could trust are most likely dead, I’m pretty sure. The reason I came to this bond hotel was so I could get a new face. I was hoping I could disappear.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mike yelled. “Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?”

“I was trying to disappear,” I said. “The last thing I wanted to do was tell anybody about my situation, especially somebody who knows my new face.”

“Well, you put all our lives in danger, you fucking bitch,” Mike yelled. “You got the Jew killed.”

“I didn’t pull the trigger,” I yelled back. “It’s not my fault. How was I supposed to know? And don’t call him a Jew, asshole.”

“He was a Jew. He said so himself.”

“Yeah, but don’t say it in that condescending tone, you prick.”

This was all the Jupiter in me coming out. Sammy wouldn’t have been nearly as defensive or confrontational. I took a cue from him and backed down.

Gary got between us and said, “We don’t have time to attack each other. No matter whose fault it is, we have a situation to deal with.”

“Yeah, and we’ll deal with it,” Mike said. “We should send her out there so that he could kill her and be done with it. If she’s dead then he’ll leave the rest of us alone.”

I shook my head. “That’s not going to work. He doesn’t know my new face. The girl he’s after was named Jupiter. He knows that any one of us could have bonded with her. Any one of us could have witnessed him kill the governor.”

“So?” Mike asked.

“So the only way to know for sure if Jupiter is dead is to kill all of us.”

Mike didn’t believe me.

He said, “What if I tell him who you are?”

“Be my guest,” I said.

Gary shook his deformed head at Mike. “Even if you could communicate with him from this distance, he wouldn’t spare you. If you know enough about her to know that she was the witness, you’d know enough to give him reason to want you dead.”

After Gary said that, Mike turned and kicked a collapsed chair across the room. “Fuck this. This is fucking bullshit.”

The room went quiet. Nobody else blamed me for the killer with the sniper rifle, not out loud anyway. But they kept their distance. Even Gary wouldn’t look me in the eyes. Without being able to go up on the roof, it was going to be impossible to signal for help. The small fire Mike and Stewart built wasn’t going to last long. And even if anyone did happen to see it on a flyover, they wouldn’t actually know it was a distress signal if there weren’t any people up there manning it. There was only one option left that we could think of.

“Okay,” Dave said, standing up to address the group. “I’m going to try to swim for it.”

Mike and Stewart nodded in agreement, but Gary and I tried to stop him.

“You can’t,” I said. “It’s not safe.”

“I’m willing to risk it,” Dave said. “I’ll just swim to the next building, see if I can get cell phone reception, then swim to the next one, until I can get help.”

“But even if that stuff is just bonding fluid, like Cecil said, it’s designed to turn your flesh into putty. It will kill you.”

Dave nodded. “I’m not saying that I’ll make it through unscathed. There’s a good chance that I’ll be scarred for life or even lose both of my arms and legs. But once I join with somebody else I’ll be whole again.”

“I’m telling you, it’s suicide.”

Mike stepped in. “Just let him go. It’s the best option we have.”

“Then why don’t you go with him?” I asked.

“What’s the point of two of us getting killed?”

“So you admit he’s putting his life in danger?”

“All our lives are in danger, because of you,” Mike said. “Somebody’s got to go.”

“Then why not you?”

Mike shrugged. It was obvious he didn’t have the balls to go in that stuff himself. “He’s a soldier. He’s used to risking his life for the greater good.”

I felt like punching the guy in his face. If it wasn’t for the Sammy in me holding me back, I would’ve knocked him on his ass.

“He’s right,” Dave said. “I should be the one to go.”

“But you have kids,” I told him. “You said so yourself.”

“Then why don’t you go?” Mike asked me. “If you don’t want him to go then you should volunteer. It’s because of you that we’re in this mess.”

“I didn’t cause the flood.”

“But you got the Jew killed. You led the killer here.”

Dave stopped us from bickering. “Enough. It’s settled. I’m going.” He looked at the others. “Does anybody have a waterproof container for my cell phone?”

Stewart raised his hand. “I have a ziplock bag.” He pulled out a little baggy filled with pills and vitamins, then handed it to Dave.

The military man dumped out the pills into Stewart’s hand before sealing his cell phone inside. Stewart counted each kind of pill, separated them, and stashed them in different pockets.

Dave tucked his pants into his shoes, tied his sleeves tight to his wrists. Pixie gave him a pair of leather gloves to cover his hands. They were a bit small, but he used them anyway.

“You won’t be safe from the sniper if you swim for it,” I told him. “He’ll have a clear shot.”

“Not if I go south,” Dave said.

“But the closest buildings are east and north. You’ll have to swim farther and you’ll be going in the wrong direction.”

He led us outside and pointed at a distant warehouse to the south. The fluid was so deep in that direction that only a couple feet of roof remained above the surface.

“I can swim to that rooftop and rest.” He then pointed to a factory to the east. “Then I can swim to that one. I’ll be out of the sniper’s range over there. I can continue east until I reach town or get somebody on the phone. It’s not the most direct route, but it’s the best option available.”

I looked at him as he peered into the black fluid. “Are you sure about this? There’s got to be another way.”

“I’m going,” Dave said. “It’s the best option available. Once you deduce your best plan of attack, you have to push forward. Hesitation will get you killed.”

“I don’t like it,” I said.

He smiled at me. “Neither do I. But it doesn’t mean it’s the wrong move.”

We followed Dave down the steps to the lake of black liquid. One look at the stuff and I thought the guy had to be brave, stupid, or crazy to do what he planned to do.

“It’s not too late to back out,” I told him. But both of us knew his mind was made up.

Mike didn’t let me sway him. “Come on, man. You can do it. Swim as fast as you can. You can make it if you move quickly.”

Dave nodded at Mike. He was the only one who didn’t seem to realize Mike was an asshole who was only looking after his own ass. “I plan to.”

He pulled down his gas mask and walked into the sludge one foot at a time, descending the staircase until it was up to his waist.

“It’s warm.” He said that not out of alarm, but curiosity. “It’s like I’m bathing in body sweat.”

Then he took the full plunge, the fluid up to his neck, wading in the slime. He swam three feet and looked back at us.

“Shit,” he complained.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he responded. “It’s just really thick. Heavy. I feel like I’ve got a bag of bricks tied to my ankles.”

“If you don’t think you can make it then don’t go,” I said.

“I’ll make it,” he said. “It’s just going to take a lot longer than I expected.”

He swam forward. Just to push himself one foot required all of his strength. It was going to wear him out.

By the time he made it to the other end of the hotel, he was moving even slower, already getting exhausted.

“It’s itchy,” he yelled back at us.

“Itchy?” Stewart asked, not loud enough for Dave to hear. “What’s he mean by that?”

Then Dave grunted and cried out, like he had a cramp in his leg.

“It’s really itchy!” he yelled.

“That’s not a good sign,” I said.

“It burns!” he shouted.

“Come back,” I yelled at him.

“No, I can make it. I’m going to keep going.”

But ten feet later he screamed again. “Shit. I’m on fucking fire.”

I called out. “It’s not worth it. Just come back.”

He continued forward for a few more strokes, but then stopped. He waded in the fluid, looking into the distance as he whined and groaned at the discomfort. He realized how far the next building was. There was no way he’d be able to put up with the burning pain long enough to make it.

“Come on,” I called out. “Get back here.”

It took a few minutes before he agreed and started to head back to us.

“What the fuck, man?” Mike complained. “You can do it. Keep going.”

“He wouldn’t make it,” Gary told him.

“Don’t be a pussy,” Mike yelled. “You knew it was going to hurt. You can’t take a little pain?”

Dave cringed and whined as he swam toward us. Every stroke was excruciating.

“There’s…” he tried to say, but had difficulty getting out the words in his condition, focusing on staying above the water. “There’s something…”

“What?” I asked.

“There’s something under there,” he said as he approached the staircase.

“What do you mean by that?” Stewart asked.

As he walked up the steps, we realized why Dave was in so much pain. He was naked. His clothes had dissolved in the fluid. Even though he was covered in the inky liquid, I could tell that much of his skin had burned away. The bones of his ribcage were visible through his flesh.

“Something grabbed my foot,” he cried. “There’s something alive down there.”

Before we could get him to elaborate, the fluid exploded behind him, covering us in the acidic goo. I wiped it out of my eyes just in time to see the thing coming out of the water behind the soldier. It was some kind of massive shape that I couldn’t make out in the dim lighting. All I could see were the arms. Hundreds of human arms growing out of the abdomen of a bus-sized serpent-like creature. The hands grabbed onto Dave and pulled him back into the water. He screamed once before he disappeared under the surface.

It happened so fast. When the thing was gone, I wasn’t sure if anyone else had even seen it. The others just looked around with dumb expressions on their faces.

“What happened?” Stewart cried. “Where’d he go?”

Mike and I backed away from the stairs as the others looked around, waiting for Dave to come back, like he just fell in by accident.

Mike confirmed what I thought I saw. “Did anyone fucking see that thing? What the hell was it?”

Gary stepped closer to the liquid, eyeing the surface carefully.

“I saw it,” he said.

I was surprised he would get so close to the surface after what had just happened. It was like he could see something in there.

“Get back,” he told us, pushing Stewart behind him.

Dave burst from the surface of the water, screaming and coughing black fluid. His face covered in goo. A dozen hands groping at his neck and shoulders, rubbing him, pulling at him. The skin slid off of his face. His teeth crumbled in his mouth. Gary reached out and tried to grab him, but he was only above water for a moment before the gray arms pulled him back down. He disappeared into the black.

“Get upstairs,” Gary yelled at us.

We didn’t hesitate. We climbed up to the fourth floor landing as fast as we could. Stewart tripped over himself twice along the way. Gary followed us slowly, moving backward so he could keep his eyes on the water.

Before he reached us, the creature emerged from the black fluid. It stretched into the air, showing us its massive form. We all got a good look at it this time. The thing was made out of people. At least fifty humans all molded together into one shape. It didn’t attack. It just stared at us with a dozen eyes spread across its grotesque form.

“What the fuck…” Mike whispered. He looked like he was about to piss himself.

Gary stepped slowly up the steps to us, trying not to provoke it.

“Get inside,” he told us.

He didn’t have to tell us twice. We backed into the waiting room as the creature hovered in the air. It leaked black fluid. Most of its flesh was like a hard insect shell, perhaps to protect it from the acidic liquid. Dave’s corpse dangled in the air, held in place by five sets of arms. The thing was eating him. Four large mouths hidden between the arms bit into his torso with crooked teeth, devouring his flesh.

“What the fuck…” Mike repeated as he entered the waiting room behind me.

When we were all inside, Gary closed the door behind us. I looked out of the window at it. The thing pawed at the railing where we last stood, grabbing hold of the edge of the roof.

“What is it?” Stewart said, peeking over my shoulder.

It arose from the water, climbing up the roof and disappearing somewhere above us. We heard it shuffling across the ceiling and then it was gone. Once it was quiet, we just looked at each other. There wasn’t anything we could say about it.

When I looked out the window again, I noticed there were other shapes in the lake where the creature emerged. Smaller creatures, closer to human-sized, that swam around the hotel.

The thing wasn’t alone. There were dozens of those creatures out there.

We were surrounded.

Clusters

“Can somebody please explain to me exactly what the fuck is going on?” Mike asked, breaking the silence that suffocated the room. “I can accept being trapped in this hotel by a flood. I can even accept a crazed hitman trying to knock us off because he wants the bitch dead. But those fucking things? What the hell are we supposed to do about those fucking things?”

Before anyone could answer him, we saw another one. It was man-sized, walking past the window, leaving a trail of black oil. The thing was more rodent than human. It had the face of a rat with two pairs of human arms. On its back was a pair of crinkled wings like those of a fly, buzzing when they moved. The thing didn’t see us through the window. It just walked by, its beady eyes scanning the hotel for food.

Stewart examined the thing through the glass. “Jesus…”

As he spoke, the creature heard him. It looked at us and twitched its whiskers in our direction. Then it ran off.

There were others crawling out of the murk, wandering the hotel. We couldn’t see them clearly. We had no idea how many of them there were. We just saw black oil-covered shapes, climbing out of the flood and moving through the shadows. It could have just been my imagination, but one of them appeared to have ant-like mandibles sticking out of its face and crab-like pinchers, with human faces where its breasts would have been.

Although we couldn’t see them clearly, we could hear them all around us. They made chirping and buzzing sounds. Some of them wailed in human voices or howled like stray dogs. Claws scratched against the walls of the room next to ours. We weren’t sure if they knew where we were or why they didn’t come after us before now. I assumed they were attracted to the noises created by Dave’s death.

We hid in the room for at least an hour, remaining silent and completely still. Eventually, they left the area, exploring other parts of the hotel or other buildings in the area. Their chirps and wails faded into the distance. Once they were far enough away from our location, we felt like we could relax. At least enough to speak.

Mike paced back and forth. “We’re not safe here. We’re so not safe here. What the hell are those things?”

The asshole stared at me as though I had all the answers, as though I was responsible for bringing the creatures just as I had been responsible for the hitman. But I had no idea.

I looked at Gary. “Do you know what they are?”

“There’s only one explanation that makes sense to me,” he said.

Everyone looked at him and listened. It was the first time they held eye contact with the mutant. His grotesque appearance was no longer upsetting to them, at least not compared to the things outside.

“They’re mutants created by the bonding machines,” he said. “Like me.”

“How is that possible?” Stewart asked. “That thing was way too big to fit into a bonding machine. How could it be a mutant?”

Gary shook his bulbous head. “I’m not saying it was created in a machine. I think it was formed underground, within all that bonding fluid that has been dumped down there over the decades. They grew like fetuses in sewage.”

“Without a machine, that would be impossible,” Mike said.

Gary shrugged. “Perhaps. Or perhaps the machine isn’t what bonds people together. Perhaps the machine just controls the bonding, makes sure you get the correct shape you desire. Without having a machine controlling the bonding, anything could happen. All kinds of creatures could form.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Stewart said.

“Maybe it doesn’t,” I said. “But I’m sure he’s not far off. They say that the original bonding machines created twins. The early bonds involved two people entering one machine. They would melt together, mix their genes, share each other’s memories and personalities, just like they do today. But instead of becoming one person, two people would form. They would be perfect clones of each other. For the sake of population control, they altered the machine to create only one person and dispose of the other clone. It would be flushed down the toilet before it was even formed. Perhaps the creatures outside are those flushed clones, but mutated and bonded together.”

Stewart said, “But that one in the window looked like a rat. Why did it look like a rat?”

“Rodents and insects must have gotten into the bonding fluid,” Gary said. “Their DNA mixed together with the human genetic material.”

“These things also could have just been created recently,” I said. “The machines on the first floor were submerged in the fluid all night. They could have been pumping out mutant after mutant until the power finally went off. Maybe those things were formed underground, but I think it’s more likely that they’re only a few hours old, just like some of us.”

“So they have the memories of people?” Stewart asked. “If they come from the excess clones of those who bonded, they would still have the minds of human beings.”

“They’re mutants,” Gary said. “Most mutants have deranged minds. These creatures are most likely of the deranged variety.”

I added, “Also, many of their minds are combined with those of insects and other animals. It’s unlikely that they’re intelligent.”

“That’s too bad,” Stewart said. “It would have been better if we could reason with them. If they had human intelligence they might not attack. They might even be willing to help us.”

“Fuck that,” Mike said. “If they were intelligent they’d have an easier time killing us. Our brains are our only advantage over them.”

“We don’t even know if they want to kill us,” I said. “Most of them are probably scared and confused. They might leave us alone.”

“Like they left Dave alone?” Mike said.

I said, “I’m not saying they’re not dangerous. I’m just saying we might be able to avoid them. They might not attack if we just stay out of their way.”

We quieted down as another passed the window. It looked like a horse-shaped human with six long silverfish-colored legs. Upon closer examination, I could see the bodies of three men combined to form this creature. Their heads melted into each other’s backs. Their arms wrapped around their waists. It moved with gracelessness, tripping and tumbling over its deformities, the third pair of legs in the back were practically dragged. The creature gurgled and hissed as it staggered by.

When it was gone, I said, “They aren’t just mutants, they’re clusters.”

“Clusters?” Stewart asked.

“A collection of living beings, fused together into monstrous forms.”

I wondered if we were the first people ever seeing anything else like this. I wondered if clusters like these weren’t uncommon, at least among early experiments with bonding machines. Perhaps clusters had been created many times before but it was just kept a secret. Perhaps there were even secret organizations that were already creating these things in a lab somewhere, trying to construct the perfect monstrous soldier. If that were the case, maybe somebody out there would know how to deal with them. Or maybe, if it was a secret that needed to be covered up, somebody out there didn’t want to leave any witnesses.

“So what’s the plan?” Stewart asked. “What are we going to do? We can’t go on the roof to signal for help, we can’t swim out of here, we can’t even leave this room.”

Mike said, “I say we just barricade the doors and wait. Somebody will come eventually.”

“Yeah, but will we still be alive by the time they come?” I asked.

“Somebody will come. Look at those creatures out there. Once the authorities see those things they’ll send the military in here to wipe them out.”

“What if they just bomb the place?” I asked.

“They probably wouldn’t bomb an urban location unless it was a last resort,” Stewart said. “I’m in favor of waiting it out.”

“We can’t just wait it out,” I said. “There’s no food or water here. We won’t last two days. Not to mention we don’t know how high the flood is going to rise. For all we know, this whole building will be submerged within hours.”

“So what the hell are we supposed to do then?” Mike asked.

When he asked me, I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. I had no idea what we were going to do. All I knew was that we had to do something. We had to survive long enough for an opportunity to present itself.

My silence was all the answer Mike required to give up hope. “So we’re basically fucked then…” He hit his head on an ancient vending machine. “We don’t even have power anymore.”

The second he said this, the power came back on. It was like hitting the vending machine knocked it into working order. We looked around the room, excited but confused.

“It’s on?” Stewart asked. “Are we saved?”

“Does that mean the bonding machines work again?” Pixie asked.

“Can we use the computers to call for help?”

Either way, we were pleasantly surprised by the return of light. Things were looking hopeful again. Gary was the only one who wasn’t excited about it. He looked out the window, then back at the group.

When I saw the concerned look on his faces, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

He said, “The power’s not returned to the rest of the block. Just this building. That means it’s coming from the generator on the roof.”

“I thought the generator was broken,” Mike said.

“It was.”

“So what’s that mean?” I asked.

Gary sighed. “It means somebody fixed it.” He paused and looked out the window again. “There’s somebody else in the hotel.”

We had to go check it out. Best case scenario, it was emergency services coming to rescue us. But if that was true, we would have heard a helicopter. It was possible they could have come by boat, but I had no idea who would be brave enough to take a boat through that stuff. And even if they were, I doubted they could’ve gotten past the creatures. Worst case scenario, it was Porn Eyes or another assassin trying to hunt us down. I had no idea how he could’ve gotten from one building to another, but if it was him he surely turned on the power as a way to lure us to the roof.

Stewart asked, “You think there’s been somebody else here the whole time? Wouldn’t we have seen them by now? Or maybe they recently came out of a machine and think they’re alone?”

“They could have arrived just now for all we know,” Mike said. “Maybe it’s the owner of the hotel coming to investigate the flood.”

“I doubt the owner of the hotel is still living,” Gary said.

It seemed stupid to go up to the roof again, but for all we knew there was a whole battalion of soldiers up there waiting to rescue us. We had to go. It was our best option.

But I wasn’t going to go unarmed. The room went quiet the second I pulled the police revolver from my purse.

“You had that the whole time?” Mike asked

I looked down at the weapon. “Yeah, I’m being hunted by a mad man. Of course I’m going to carry a gun around with me.”

Mike tried to snatch it from my hand, “Let me have it. You probably don’t even know how to shoot that thing.”

I backed away before he could grab it. Then pointed it at his kneecap until he backed off. “I can shoot just fine.”

“Okay, okay…” he said with his hands in the air. “But if you keep the gun, you’ve got to lead the way.”

“I plan to.”

I exited the fourth floor waiting room as quietly as I could, but the old squealing door was loud enough to be heard across the building. There weren’t any of those mutant things nearby. I could hear them like croaking frogs all around us, out in the black lake, but I couldn’t see them. They certainly saw us.

“Come on,” I said when the coast was clear.

They followed me around the side of the building. When we turned the corner, Stewart screamed like a girl as one of those things landed on the railing next to his hand. It wasn’t very big at all. It was a moth-shaped creature the size of a basketball, coming to investigate the outdoor hotel lights that recently switched on. The thing flapped its wings and bobbed its baby-shaped head back and forth. Its rat tail swayed from side to side as Stewart ran past it and grabbed onto my coat for safety. Once we were all past it, the moth creature flew up to the light and fluttered its wings against the bulb.

“That thing nearly killed you, Stewart,” Mike teased, pretending he wasn’t equally freaked out by the baby-headed moth. “You’re lucky you got away alive.”

When we got to the ladder that led to the roof, I hesitated. I looked up at the top of the ladder, wondering what I’d find up there. I had a really bad feeling about it. There were no voices coming from above. No footsteps. No signs of life whatsoever. I really, really didn’t think it was a good idea to go up, but I was going to anyway. I had to know who turned on the generator.

“Wait here,” I told the others. “I should go up first. I’ll let you know if it’s safe.”

Gary didn’t like the idea of me going up there by myself, but he knew I wasn’t going to let him come with me.

“Watch out for the gunman,” Gary said. “Stay behind cover.”

I nodded, then climbed up.

The roof was empty. No one was up there, not human or cluster. The only sound was that of the generator’s engine humming. I crept slowly across the roof, keeping low. The sniper was most likely still watching for me, unless he saw the clusters on the building and decided to forget about us and escape with his own life. Or maybe the clusters invaded his building and killed him.

Crawling toward the generator, I noticed the rooftop was covered in black footprints. There was bonding fluid everywhere, like a whole army of clusters had come through there. Some of the footprints were close to human-shaped. Others were animal-like, some looked like giant snake tracks that slithered across the ground. The large splattering prints that covered half the roof had to have been from the monstrous serpent that killed Dave.

When I got to the generator, I could tell somebody else had been there. A toolbox rested on the side of the machine, with tools spread across the ground, covered in black ink. Whoever fixed the generator seemed to have left in a hurry. They were probably spotted by one of the clusters. Whoever it was, I hoped they got away. Unless it was Porn Eyes, of course.

I looked up at the spot where the shooter had fired at us, wondering if he was still there. I didn’t see any light shining against a scope as I did before. I didn’t see any sort of movement or shapes up there. It was possible the killer left already. I slowly moved closer, inching my way to the other side of the roof, to get a look at the rest of the building. It appeared that whoever fixed the generator fled in this direction. They were barefoot, their prints clearly visible in the puddles of ink. If he was barefoot he must have come from a bonding machine somewhere in the building. We checked all the rooms and I was sure we didn’t miss any of them, but there was a chance that somebody from one of the lower submerged floors survived. Or perhaps they had been there the whole time but have been hiding from us. Perhaps the sight of Gary was enough to keep them hidden. Or perhaps they had been busy being hunted by clusters long before we even knew the creatures existed. Either way, they were long gone. There was nothing on the balconies below me. Just more black footprints and puddles of slime.

Before I headed back, something caught my eye. Out on the lake of black fluid, I saw somebody. He was on a makeshift raft—some kind of slab of nailed-together plywood. A hunting rifle strapped to his shoulder.

“Is that him?” Gary asked. He appeared over my shoulder, looking in the direction I was looking.

“I thought I told you to stay down there,” I told him.

He said, “You took too long. I was worried something happened to you.” Then he pointed at the man on the raft. “Is that the shooter?”

I nodded. He was too far away to know for sure, but I believed it was Porn Eyes. “He’s trying to get to us.”

“It doesn’t look like he’s going to get very far,” Gary said.

There were multiple clusters swimming through the black ink around the raft. But Porn Eyes lay perfectly still, not moving, not making a sound.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I said. “They’re ignoring him.”

A large cluster, almost as big as the one that got Dave, bumped the raft as it snaked through the fluid. The thing didn’t try to attack the raft at all. It just moved past it like the raft was just a lifeless piece of driftwood.

“That guy’s insane,” I said. “He’s just pretending to be a piece of garbage floating through the flood, and it’s working.”

Gary nodded. Neither of us wanted him to make it, but we both seemed to respect him for succeeding. Maybe we were even jealous he came up with the idea first.

“How long do you think until he gets across?” I asked.

Gary said, “He’s not paddling the raft. He’s expecting it to just drift over to us. It might never make it. He might be stuck out there all night.”

I smirked. “And he can’t shoot at us from out there, either. Not unless he wants to alert the creatures to his position.” Then I paused, contemplating a course of action. Porn Eyes was in a much more vulnerable position than we were, far more vulnerable than ours. It was our best opportunity to get rid of him. “I wonder if there’s anything we can do to sink his boat from here.”

Gary nodded. “I don’t know if we could sink his raft, but perhaps we could bring him to the mutants’ attention.”

“How do we do that?”

“Throwing rocks into the fluid near his raft would bring the curious ones,” Gary said.

“We don’t have rocks.”

“We might have other projectiles.” He pointed at the toolbox. “A wrench or screwdriver, maybe.”

I nodded and was about to go for the tools, when Gary stopped me, grabbed me by the arm.

He said, “But it’s not safe. Once the creatures are alerted to his position, he’ll have no reason to hold back on using his rifle. He’ll shoot at us without hesitation.”

I agreed. “Then we shouldn’t show our heads after the first throw.”

I went for the tools and brought them back to the edge of the roof. Opening the toolbox, we had plenty of projectiles. Hopefully we wouldn’t need them for anything else.

“So if the shooter wasn’t the person who fixed the generator, who was?” Gary asked.

“Don’t know.” I looked through the toolbox, scanning for the perfect tool to throw. “Nobody was up here. I just saw the toolbox and a lot of footprints. Whoever it was, they must’ve ran to safety the second they got the generator going. The sound probably attracted some of the nearby freaks.”

When I used the term freak, I realized it might have been insensitive to Gary. But he didn’t say anything to correct me.

“We’ll have to search for them after we take care of the shooter,” Gary said.

“Sounds good.” I chose a socket wrench from the toolbox and bounced it in my palm to test the weight. “Let’s just hope this plan doesn’t backfire on us.”

Hundreds of things could have gone wrong with this plan. The shooter could have spotted us first and took us both out before we could throw a single tool. Perhaps he even had a silencer, so his shots wouldn’t even attract the clusters that surrounded him. There was also a chance that our actions would bring the attention of the clusters to us, rather than Porn Eyes. Or even if the clusters did go after Porn Eyes, there was still the possibility that they would swarm the hotel just like they did when Dave died.

But we decided to go with the plan anyway. Once the killer made it to the hotel, we wouldn’t have much of a defense against him. He’d knock us off one by one, starting with me, and there’d be nothing we could do to fight back.

Gary chose a hammer from the toolbox and sat up, holding his projectile in the air.

“Ready?” I asked.

He nodded.

Then we threw the tools as far as we could into the flood. My socket wrench only made it thirty feet, not even half the distance it needed to go. But Gary’s strength allowed him to throw farther. His hammer splashed just two feet away from the killer’s raft. The instant Porn Eyes glanced in our direction, we ducked. We kept our heads down before he took aim.

“Next throw.” I took a monkey wrench from the toolbox and handed it to Gary. “Think you can hit the same spot without looking?”

Gary nodded. Without lifting his head into view, he threw the wrench over the side of the roof. We didn’t know where it hit, but we heard a splash. By the third throw, the creatures in the fluid became excited. We heard them wail and screech, thrashing in the liquid. Shots were fired. A crashing sound.

“Did they get him?” I asked.

Gary took a quick peek and lowered his head. Then raised it back up.

“He’s not there,” Gary said.

I lifted my head and saw what he meant. Porn Eyes, the raft, the rifle, they were gone. Disappeared.

“Do you think he was pulled under?” I asked.

“It’s possible.”

We kept looking, trying to make sure that the man was dead. But there was no evidence. No body. It was also difficult to tell with all the activity in the fluid. Dozens of clusters swam through the liquid like a frenzy of sharks. They squealed and hissed. Perhaps fighting over the assassin’s corpse.

“They’re getting wild,” Gary said. “We should go downstairs before they see us.”

But just as he said that, the creatures turned their attentions toward the hotel. Dozens of cluster-creatures climbed out of the fluid up the steps of the building toward us. We ran across the roof and slid down the ladder.

“Where the hell were you guys?” Stewart cried. “We thought you were dead.”

“We had something to take care of,” I said.

When Gary got down the ladder, he pushed us in the direction of the waiting room.

“We need to get inside,” he said. “They’re coming.”

“Who’s coming?”

“Those things. Hundreds of them.”

That was enough to get Mike and Stewart running. But as we moved across the landing, I realized someone was missing.

“Where’s Pixie?” I asked.

Mike said, “What? Who?”

“That girl,” I said. “She was just with you. Where’d she go?”

Mike didn’t seem to realize she was ever there. “How the hell should I know?”

“She probably went back to the waiting room,” Stewart said.

We ran back to the waiting room, but Pixie was nowhere in sight. I searched every corner. She was gone.

“Where could she have gone?” Stewart asked.

I poked my finger into Mike’s chest as I yelled at him. “Why weren’t you watching her? You know she’s not right in the head.”

“She’s not right in the head? I thought she was just quiet.”

“You shouldn’t have let her go off on her own.”

“I didn’t even realize she left.”

As a long-legged cluster passed the window, Mike grabbed me by the waist and said, “Get down.” Then pulled me to the floor. We watched the creature climb across the railing. It had four long legs, like those of a spider but as thick and meaty as a human’s. Its face was a collection of five human heads, each covered in red spider-like eyes.

“We have to go find her,” I said to Mike and Gary in a soft whisper.

“We’re not going after her,” Mike said. “We’ll be killed.”

To my surprise, Gary sided with Mike for a change. “He’s right. There’s no reason to risk all of our lives for hers.”

“But she’s alone out there,” I said. “We have to help.”

“For all we know, she’s already well-hidden,” Gary said. “Trying to find her might actually bring unnecessary danger to her as well as to us. We’ll look for her once everything calms down.”

I peeked out the window. The things were crawling all over the place. I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to listen to him. Damn the Sammy Smyth half of me. Damn that stupidly honorable prick. That part of me couldn’t let it go, it couldn’t just sit around while somebody else was in trouble. Perhaps it was not honor at all, but guilt. He would feel too guilty if he let somebody die to save his own skin. The Jupiter in me was much more keen on self-preservation. She wouldn’t have a problem leaving some strange sex-crazed girl, who probably wasn’t even really a girl, to die due to her own stupidity. It was the girl’s own damn fault for wandering off when she should have stayed put.

The Sammy side of me won. I couldn’t let her die. I had to go find her. Before the others could stop me, I stood up and ran outside. The second the door slammed open, a dozen cluster-creatures jumped over the railing next to me. I expected them to attack, but instead they fled. The loud noise must have alarmed them.

“Where are you going?” Gary asked, yelling at me from inside the room.

Mike and Stewart didn’t bother trying to stop me. They ducked behind the furniture, hoping my actions didn’t bring an army of mutants inside.

“I need to find her,” I told Gary, then moved on.

With the area temporarily clear of clusters, I used the opportunity to run across the landing, peeking into each of the bond rooms with open doors. I couldn’t see Pixie in any of them, but there were certainly places she could’ve been hiding beyond my brief view. I called out to her, “Pixie? You in here?”

Each room, I called out. Unless she kept quiet, I was sure I could get to her in time.

Once I reached the end of the landing and was about to turn the corner, I looked back and noticed a group of clusters closing in. They were no longer frightened by my presence. They climbed back up the railings, shuffled down the balcony after me. Gary stepped out of the waiting room, trying to get me to turn back, but there were already several twitchy black forms between us. We were separated. I continued my search for the girl as Gary stepped back into the waiting room and closed the door.

A lumpy figure stepped into my path and staggered toward me. Its head was a messy pile of flesh. Its human face was barely visible within its meaty lump of skull. The thing gurgled and moaned at me. Its mouth wide open, drooling black fluid. I held out my revolver and pushed forward.

“Esssttttttah…” the creature said.

It seemed as though it was trying to communicate, but its words were unintelligible. I looked into its blue human eyes. The thing reached out to me with rope-like arms.

“Eshhhaaatttaa…” it said.

The thing was spouting nonsense.

“Out of my way,” I said, pointing the gun in his face.

If it had any human intelligence at all it would know it was in danger and I wouldn’t need to kill it. But it didn’t react whatsoever to the sight of the gun. It didn’t appear to recognize what it was.

“Estttthhh…” it said.

The thing wasn’t speaking. That was just the noise its lungs made as it breathed. When I reached it, the thing lunged at me, trying to wrap its rope-limbs around my throat. I shot it in the forehead and its black brains sprayed out the back of its globular skull. I stepped over it and continued on.

I could hear something running toward me. The concrete floor of the hotel landing rumbled beneath my feet, growing louder as it closed in. I turned around to see a massive predator darting at me. The thing was a combination of three humans and an alley cat, forming some kind of six-legged tiger-sized monster with crooked fangs and claws. It was large and clumsy, tripping over smaller cluster-creatures as it charged forward, but I knew if it got me before I got it, I’d be dead. The second those twelve-inch sickle-shaped claws sunk into my skin, there’d be nothing left for me to do but hope the suffering didn’t last long.

Trying to aim for one of its three heads, I pulled the trigger and shot the cat-cluster. The first bullet pierced its chest, but didn’t slow it down. The second hit it in the neck. Blood sprayed across the landing, but it kept coming. By that point, I didn’t have time to aim anymore. I fired randomly, putting two more slugs into it. The thing dropped before it got to me, but it didn’t die. It fell to its knees, drooled blood down its chest, then hopped the railing and disappeared into the black water.

“Fuck…” I said, looking down at the pistol.

Only one bullet left.

Five more creatures came down the landing toward me, moving slowly, hissing and growling like wild dogs. I wondered if I should use the last bullet on myself. It might have been preferable to letting those animal-like mutants get their hands on me. But I didn’t get to make that decision.

Before I could use the last bullet, something blunt hit me in the back of the head. My vision blurred. My muscles went weak. The last thing I remembered was falling back into somebody’s arms.

I woke up inside of a machine. Naked, covered in goo. It was a bonding machine. The lid was closed. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel somebody was on top of me.

“Shhh…” the person whispered. “They’re right outside.”

It was Pixie. She rubbed herself against me, kissed my neck. The back of my skull was throbbing.

“Did you hit me?” I asked her.

“Shhhh…” she said. “I wanted to melt with you.”

I pushed her face away from mine. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

She put her hand over my mouth and whispered, “They’ll hear you.”

I listened. There were creatures in the room with us, lurking outside the bonding chamber. I couldn’t believe Pixie would do this. After I risked my life to save her, that was how she paid me back?

“Get me the fuck out of here,” I said.

“It’s too late,” Pixie said. “The bonding process has already started.”

“Are you kidding me? We can’t bond now.”

“We have to.”

“There’s not enough time,” I said. “Even if the generator has enough juice to complete an entire bonding process, which I doubt it does, the flood level will likely swallow us long before it completes. You’ve just killed us both.”

The girl didn’t seem to care. She was busy rubbing her naked body against me, grabbing my breasts, trying to suck on my lips.

“If I’m going to die this is the way I want to go,” she said. “I want to melt away with you. Melt all the way to Heaven.”

She was a psycho. An absolute psycho. I should’ve left her to die.

As Pixie rubbed my thighs, feeling between my legs, she suddenly froze. She stopped caressing me. She stopped trying to kiss me. She stopped moaning with pleasure.

“Is this…” she said, as she grabbed the dick between my legs. “Do you have a cock?”

I was surprised she didn’t notice when she stripped me naked and put me into the machine. She must have done it in a hurry.

“Yeah, it was a mutation in my last bonding,” I said.

“So you’re a dude?” she asked.

“No, I have both sex organs,” I said.

“Gross!” Pixie dropped my penis and pushed away from me, trying to get as far away from my penis as possible. “I don’t want to melt with a guy. I thought you were a chick.”

I laughed at her. Whichever men she used to be were obviously homophobic.

“How do I get out of here?” she asked, trying to push open the bonding chamber lid. “How do I stop it?”

“There’s nothing we can do,” I said. “You fucked up.”

As our bodies turned to liquid and melted into one, I couldn’t help but dissolve with a smile on my face. If I was going to die because of this stupid pervert at least I got some kind of payback in knowing that she didn’t get her way. She wasn’t able to satisfy her sick desires.

PART FOUR

PIXIE

Soup

I love the feeling of transformation. I love the tenderness of melting into another person. I love the idea of two people being molded into one being. All of my previous incarnations had one thing in common: all we cared about was finding somebody else to melt with. It was something that put us all on the same page. It gave us all a solitary purpose. Except for one person.

I was once a young girl named Mandy Soren. I grew up in a very different world than my other incarnations. I was a Mormon, a Latter Day Saint. And I lived in a community far from the rest of the world of sin and debauchery. A community of five hundred righteous brothers and sisters who I considered family.

“You don’t have a choice, Mandy, you have to marry Elder Stevens,” my mother told me as she tailored my wedding dress that had been passed down five generations.

I was thirteen years old and a late bloomer. Marrying a man, let alone an old man like Elder Stevens, was not something I was happy about. I would become his fifth wife and would no doubt be forced to give him half a dozen children as did the previous wives before me. But my mother always said he would be a great husband. He was one of the most powerful men in our small community. He had a large house and the nicest cars. He was truly blessed by the heavenly father and I was destined to become his latest blessing.

“But I want to marry Danny,” I told her. “Danny’s my boyfriend.”

“He’s not your boyfriend,” she told me. “The heavenly father would never bless a union between you and that Joelson boy. He’s not worthy of wives.”

“But Elder Stevens already has four wives. Danny doesn’t have any.”

“And Danny won’t ever have any wives. Not you, not anyone. You must marry a proper man. A holy man. Like your father.”

“But you and the other moms are close to the same age. Elder Stevens is old, older than Daddy. I’d rather marry someone my own age.”

“It’s what the heavenly father wishes of us. You wish to please him, don’t you? You want to go to Heaven when you die, right?”

I shrugged. Then my mother poked me with the needle and I screamed, “Yes! I want to go to Heaven!”

She smiled in the mirror with her thin, gray lips. “Then you’ll marry Elder Stevens.”

Five days before the wedding, I wanted to run away with Danny. No matter what my mother said, I didn’t want to marry Elder Stevens. He scared me. He always looked at me funny, like something was wrong with me, like I had demons following me around and only he could see them. He was one of the meanest people in the whole church. I thought he only wanted to marry me because he wanted to punish me. He wanted to teach me a lesson.

I looked everywhere for Danny, all over town. I walked around in my wedding dress as I searched for him, dragging the train in the mud. The men in the gray vans followed me through the streets, wondering why I was out of my home. They didn’t like women leaving their homes unescorted. But I let them follow me. I didn’t care if they put a gun to my head, I wasn’t going to let them get in my way.

Several boys my age had been taken in the night. They were pulled out of their beds, dragged out of their homes, and tossed into the back of a pickup truck. Danny was one of them. I didn’t realize this was something they did to most boys in the community. I had older brothers who left, long ago, who mom said had lost their way and were sent to live with the heathens. But it wasn’t always true. Once the community started using bonding technology, the exiled boys no longer had to leave.

I asked Edner, the old farmer on the outskirts of town. I saw the trucks pull into his property, the trucks that took Danny and the other boys away. I asked him where Danny was. He frowned when I spoke to him.

“Why you lookin’ for him, Little Princess?” he asked. “He’s nothing to nobody here now. He’s gone the way of the sin.”

He curled up his toothless lips and spit into the dirt.

“I want to see him. He’s my best friend.”

“The devil’s not your friend, Princess. The devil tempts you away from what is right and holy.”

“Is he here? Can I talk to him?”

Edner looked over at the two men in the gray vans at the end of his drive. He spit into the dirt again and looked down at me.

“He’s in the soup,” Edner said.

“The soup?”

“Behind the barn. In the soup.”

I walked around the back of the barn and investigated what Edner was referring to as the soup. It was a hole in the ground, filled with a black fluid. Several teenage boys were in there, trapped within the pit by a steel cage. They were missing limbs and chunks of skin. The pit was digesting them, melting them, turning them into a boy stew.

“Danny?” I asked the pit of digesting boys.

I couldn’t tell one apart from the others. They were all covered in black. It wasn’t until I heard him speak that I recognized Danny.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said.

I went to him. I climbed on top of the steel cage and held his fingers through the bars.

“We said we were going to leave town together,” I said to him.

“You can’t leave town. It is a horrible, sinful world outside of our community. I don’t want you to sully your soul in such a vile place.”

“But it was your idea,” I said. “You wanted to leave. We kept talking about it. We planned for it.”

“I know I was wrong now. You should marry Elder Stevens. It is God’s plan for you. It is your only path to salvation.”

“But what about you? I want to be with you.”

“I wish we could be together. But I have my own path now. I have learned that there is still a place for me here. There is still a place where I can find salvation.”

“In the soup?” I asked.

“Here, on this farm,” he said.

“You’re being turned into soup. How can you just let them turn you into soup?”

“It is God’s plan for me.”

Two days later, I was given a dozen flowers from my soon-to-be groom. He didn’t send them personally. One of his wives dropped them off at my family’s doorstep. She had two crooked-eyed daughters with her. My soon-to-be sister wife and children. She didn’t say anything, just dropped off the flowers and left. A horrible woman I’d be forced to live with for the rest of my life.

The flowers did not look like ordinary flowers. They were made of flesh. They had long neck-like stems and petals like locks of hair. They looked like sunflowers made of human skin. When I held them up, the flowers opened their eyes and stared at me. They blinked and looked around the room.

I set them down on the coffee table, then drooped a blanket over them. I didn’t want the flowers watching me like that.

“Mom?” I asked, going into the kitchen to pull her away from the dishes. “Why do the flowers have eyes?”

When my mother investigated the flesh-like flowers, she said, “Oh, these are your flower boys. It’s a new tradition. All young brides get flower boys before the wedding.”

My face frowned at the odd plants. “I’ve never heard of flower boy flowers before.”

“They are very special flowers. They are made from sinful children as a way for them to repent for their wicked ways. Their ugliness has been made beautiful, for the rest of their lives.”

“Children? What children?”

“Children from our community, of course. All the children who left us.”

“Like Danny?” I asked. Then I peered into the flowers’ eyes, looking for any sign of my friend.

“Yes, boys like Danny. But not Danny himself. He wasn’t to become a flower boy. The heavenly father had different plans for him.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Then my mother patted me on the head and avoided the question.

“Now take care of those. Water them and feed them every day. Flower boys can live for fifty or sixty years if you take good care of them.”

I nodded my head. “Okay…”

Then I looked down at the potted flowers. I really didn’t want to have anything to do with them. They dripped sweat onto my fingers and smelled of wet feet.

When I tried to sleep that night, the flowers stared at me all night long. They watched me in my bed, bouncing their round fleshy bodies up and down. I felt like I wasn’t alone. I had a dozen boy eyes staring at me. It was very irritating.

“Can you understand me?” I asked the flower boys.

They blinked a long hard blink at me.

“You can?” I asked. “Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

They blinked once for yes.

I wanted to test them. I wanted to make sure they understood.

“Can you hear me? If yes, blink once. If no, blink twice.”

They blinked once. I really wasn’t sure how they could hear. They didn’t have any ears I could see.

“Can you sing to me? If yes, blink once. If no, blink twice.”

They blinked twice. I asked that one on purpose. I figured they wouldn’t be able to sing. They didn’t have any mouths. But at least they could communicate with their eyes.

“Are you happy being flower boys?” I asked.

Three of them blinked twice. The rest blinked once. I didn’t trust the ones who blinked once, so I only paid attention to the others.

“Who were you before you became flowers?” I asked. “Did you know me?”

All of them blinked once.

“You all know me? Did we go to school together?”

All but one of them blinked once.

“Were you friends with Danny?”

Four of them blinked once.

“Are any of you Danny?”

They all blinked twice. My mother wasn’t lying. Danny wasn’t turned into a flower boy.

“Danny was my best friend. I want to know what’s going to happen to him. He’s supposed to become soup but I don’t want him to be soup. I want him to stay Danny. Do any of you know what will happen to him?”

Two of them blinked once.

I got up from the bed and sat closer.

“Do you? Really?”

They blinked once again.

“Where can I find him?”

The two flowers didn’t blink. They could only answer yes or no questions.

“Will he be on the farm?” I asked.

They blinked once.

“Will he be changed? Like you?”

They blinked once.

“Will I recognize him if I see him?”

They blinked twice.

“Will he still like me in his new form?”

They paused for a moment. Then they blinked twice.

I didn’t want to talk to them anymore after that. I turned them around so they would face the other direction, so they wouldn’t watch me while I slept. Then I turned off the light and disappeared into dreams.

Boys and Elders

The night before my wedding, Elder Stevens came to visit me. Only it didn’t look like it was Elder Stevens. It was a much younger man who said he was Elder Stevens.

“Hello, Mandy,” he said to me, sitting on the edge of the couch with a demented smile on his face. Even though he had the face of an eighteen year old boy, he still dressed and spoke as though he were seventy-five. “Did you get my flowers I sent you?”

I nodded. “They’re nice.”

“Pretty girls always love pretty things,” he said. His eyeballs popping out of their sockets at me.

I sat down on the couch across from him. My mother was gone. The other women of the house were also missing. It was just Elder Stevens and I.

“You look different,” I said to him.

He touched his face. “Ah, yes. I bonded with a young man last month. You know the one. Jeremy, I think his name is?”

“Jeremy? My cousin?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“What does it mean to bond?” I asked.

“Bonding is not encouraged by the heavenly father.”

“Is it a sin?”

“It’s not a sin. It’s just a thing to be avoided. A thing to be reserved for special occasions. For special people.”

“Like you?”

He laughed. Then he stood up, stepped forward and sat down on the couch next to me. “Yes, like me. You see, I was too old for my body. I needed an upgrade. Like buying a new car. So your cousin and I have become one person.”

“I thought my cousin was banished for being sinful.”

“Your cousin has been redeemed. He gave his body to me in exchange for eternal happiness in the afterlife.”

“So you have his memories? You are both together as one?”

He placed his hand on my leg. “No, not at all. You see, bonding is a sin when it is more than just the flesh. God doesn’t like when people join in bonding machines. When two people join together, their souls join. God created our souls. He doesn’t want our souls mixed together.”

“Is that why I’m not allowed to join?”

“You’re not allowed to join because you’re a woman. You don’t have a reason to join. You’re supposed to have lots of children. One woman can have many babies. But two women can have twice that. Three or four can have even more. So why combine together two, three, or four women into one? It’s wasteful. God doesn’t like it when we’re wasteful.”

I nodded at him.

“Women shouldn’t bond at all, but men can occasionally. When their bodies grow weak, when they need to start anew so that they can continue to do God’s work, then it is alright. But it’s not right to combine in the soul. It’s only acceptable to combine in the body.” He pointed at his head. “You see, your cousin’s soul isn’t in here anymore. His soul went to Heaven. I joined with his body only.”

“So he died before you joined with him?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” said Elder Stevens. “We put him into a coma. Scrambled his brain until he was a vegetable. There was no Jeremy left inside when we bonded. His brain was dead. His soul left his body. Just machines kept him alive long enough to join with me. I got his DNA, his health and his youth. He gets eternal happiness in the afterlife.”

“So you’re now my cousin? That means we shouldn’t get married, right?”

Elder Stevens gave me a stern look. “I already told you. Your cousin is gone to Heaven. He’s not inside of me anymore. You can marry me without guilt.”

He rubbed my bare knee and looked me in the eyes. I knew he said that my cousin Jeremy was no longer inside of him, but when I looked into his eyes all I saw was the boy who used to push me on the swing when I was five. The creepy smile and bugged-out eyes were all Elder Stevens, but that look behind his eyes was Jeremy—trapped inside the old man’s mind.

The morning of the wedding, I snuck out of my parents’ house and went out to the farm, looking for Danny. There were no longer any boys in the soup. The black pit was empty. They must have all melted away.

I searched the property for the farmer, but the old man was gone. Probably getting dressed up for the wedding that day. Everyone in town planned to be there. Everyone but me.

There was no sign of Danny anywhere on the property. No sign of Danny, or flower boys, or farmers. But there were plenty of animals.

Upon closer examination, all of the farm animals seemed different. They were less furry than usual. I approached the chickens. They were made of pink blubbery flesh, like the rumps of small boys. Their beaks the texture of toenails. The pigs were even more fleshy than the chickens. Plump balls of meat with stubby little legs. But their faces were human. They didn’t have snouts. They didn’t squeal or roll around in the mud. They were the faces of human boys, crying and whimpering, sniveling in the cold.

I didn’t find Danny until I went out into the field, toward the cattle. The cows were made of men, four of them melted together to form one beast. Danny was part of one of them. His body was curled around the torso of the cow, melted into the others like a pile of crayons left in the sun. His face dangling off the side like a tumor. The head of the cow looked like two boys with their faces smashed together and elongated to take the shape of a bull’s head. It ignored me when I approached it, just grazing languidly on grass, plopping cow pies into the mud.

“Danny?” I asked him. “Is that really you?”

He opened his eyes on the side of the cow.

“Mandy?” he asked. His voice was stiff and muffled. His lungs were not used as much anymore. “Aren’t you supposed to be married today?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I’m leaving. I wondered if you wanted to come with me.”

“I can’t come with you,” he said. “My place is here now. You shouldn’t leave either. Your place is here, by the Elder’s side.”

“Our place isn’t here,” I said. “It never was.”

“Of course it is. It’s all part of heavenly father’s plan.”

“It’s not heavenly father’s plan,” I said to him. “It’s just Elder Stevens’ plan. The leaders of this community make plans that benefit their selves and no one else.”

“What do you mean? Are you questioning the elders?”

“Why do you think you’ve been turned into a cow?” I asked.

“Because I was a sinner.”

“And what did you do that made you a sinner?”

“I sinned.”

“Says who?”

“Says the elders.”

“Do you want to know why you were cast out as a sinner? Because you were competition. The elders didn’t want boys like you marrying all the young women. They wanted to keep them to their selves. They used to just send them away, but now they use them in other ways. They turn them into flowers and livestock and vessels to keep old men young.”

Danny tried to look away from me, but his flattened eyes couldn’t move very far against the side of the cow. I was originally going to take him with me, but I didn’t want him to come anymore. He wouldn’t have been able to come anyway.

When I left, he watched me with his stretched and melted face. There was nothing I could do even if he wanted my help. I had to leave alone.

I escaped through the desert where the men in gray vans wouldn’t find me. When I made it to the highway, I hitchhiked into the city. Then I lived on the streets for a few weeks. Elder Stevens did everything he could to find me. My picture was posted all over the place. Because of my age, I didn’t have any rights. If I went to the police they would send me back to my parents, back to Elder Stevens. My only escape was to bond with someone, disappear into somebody else’s body.

A woman took me in. She was wealthy, even wealthier than Elder Stevens. She introduced me to the pleasures of bonding, explained to me how much better my life would be if I gave up my past and disappeared into a collection of many souls. It seemed sinful to me, going against everything I was raised to believe, but she was strong, so much stronger than the women who raised me. She took me into her body and together we shared a life. We became one. And we used our wealth to convince others to melt with us. It was a lifestyle that quickly became an addiction. Bonding made me smarter, stronger, but the experience of the act was what really drove me to combine with as many women as I could find. I gave myself over to it in the same way my family gave themselves over to God. Only my God was so much more heavenly than theirs.

PART FIVE

STORK

Survivor

My eyes opened to the sound of scratching on the outside of the metal chamber. I was alive. I don’t know how, but the bonding was a success. I’d been out for hours. There was no telling what had happened while I was gone. The others could’ve been dead or rescued already for all I knew. I feared that I was all alone with the creatures outside.

Part of me was aroused from the bonding experience, forcing me to close my eyes and enjoy soaking in the thick fluids covering my naked body. But a stronger part forced me to ignore the stimulation, too focused on survival to care about the eroticism of joining in the flesh. Pixie and her past components had given up on life long ago, they’d given themselves over to pleasure, living only for the experience of bonding. But the Jupiter side of me wasn’t the same. Her strength overpowered the weakness of those lesser parts of me. I wanted to live for greater things. I wanted my life to have meaning. I actually cared about whether I lived or died.

Gunshots in the distance. Not from the hotel. Somewhere else in the Wire District. The military perhaps? Were the authorities finally coming in to take care of this mess? Whatever was scratching on the outside of the machine went away, drawn to the sound of gunfire. I wasn’t sure if there was anything else out there, but it was my only chance to escape. I opened the chamber lid a crack and peeked into the room. It was too dark to see for sure, the only light coming from the computer screens and doorway, but it appeared to be safe. There wasn’t any movement coming from the shadows. I didn’t have time to play it safe unless I wanted to hide in the machine forever.

As I exited the chamber, I fell face-first onto the floor, forgetting my post-bonding muscle loss. It wasn’t going to be easy to move around for a while. I had to take it slow. I lifted myself using the computer table, staring at the monitor as I pulled myself up. The name on the monitor read Stork. That was now my name. Stork. A random word Pixie had typed in when filling out the forms prior to melting. I really didn’t think that one through. If I survived, I wasn’t sure how I was going to adapt to the name.

Looking at myself in the mirror, I couldn’t make out the features of my face very well in the dim lighting, but I could tell I was tall, almost freakishly tall, and lanky, and bald, with long fingers, my ribs showing through the skin. My breasts were far too small for my body and I still had that extra penis that Hydra had, dangling over my hidden vagina. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps mutations never went away once they showed themselves. I’d be stuck a hermaphrodite no matter how many times I joined.

I seemed perfectly human, but there was also something inhuman about my new body. Perhaps it was the way my spine curled due to my unusual height, or the way the length of my fingers almost felt like claws. Though, looking closer, it was most likely my eyes. I had large dark eyes that barely fit into my head. Alien eyes. I wasn’t a freak, not like Gary. I was just a little… off. Yet I wasn’t displeased with my new self. I was actually proud of my look. I was beautiful. And, after giving it some more thought, I realized Stork was the perfect name for me.

Leaving the hotel room naked and unarmed, I moved slowly and silently like a long-legged spider. The gun and my clothes were nowhere to be seen—not that they would’ve fit me anyway. I didn’t see any of those things outside but I could hear them everywhere. They chirped and squealed from other parts of the hotel, from the liquid, from the buildings in the distance. The black fluid had risen all the way to the fourth floor. It should’ve risen even higher while I was in the machine. It must have stopped. Perhaps the fourth floor was as high as it was going to get.

As I crept toward the other side of the hotel, I wondered if the others would recognize me as human when I found them. One look at me and they’d probably assume I was some kind of creature. They didn’t even know I bonded. They probably thought Pixie and Hydra were dead. I knew I’d have to be careful when approaching them.

I found my gun around the corner, just lying there next to a couple of dead clusters. One of them was the creature I had killed. The other was smaller. It had a bullet-shaped hole in its rat-shaped skull. The last bullet in my gun had been used on it. Who killed it, I had no idea. I tossed the gun onto the corpse and moved on.

A loud nearby screeching sound caused me to jump into the nearby bonding room, the one I had woken within when I was Pixie. I peered out of the broken doorway, but couldn’t see the creature that made the noise. It was hiding in the fluid nearby. I couldn’t tell how close.

In the distance, there were pillars of smoke coming from the factories around me. One of the buildings was on fire, another had collapsed into the black lake. The sun was coming up, so I could see the surroundings in the Wire District a little better. Clusters must have invaded the nearby buildings, probably attacking the mechanical workers within, causing explosions and fires. The whole Wire District was in ruins. It probably wouldn’t come back from this anytime soon. A lot of people were going to lose a lot of money. For some reason, that thought made me a little happy. Perhaps it was the Jupiter in me.

There were two bodies in the fourth floor waiting room where I’d left the others, but they weren’t anyone I knew. They were both soldiers in uniform, gas masks over their faces, lying in puddles of their own blood. Both of them had their stomachs ripped out.

“Did a rescue party come while I was out?” I asked the empty room.

My voice was alien and deep. It sounded almost electronic. Something was seriously wrong with my vocal cords, some kind of a mutation. That wasn’t going to help anyone believe I was actually human.

“What the hell happened here?”

I went to the soldiers and touched them. Their skin was cold. They’d been dead for a long time. This had to have happened days ago. I wondered how long I’d been asleep. Something had to have gone wrong with my bonding process. I’d been out much longer than I realized.

Gunshots in the distance, the same as the ones I heard when I awoke in the bonding machine. I looked out the doorway. There must have been more soldiers out there somewhere, in one of the distant buildings.

I wondered if the others had been rescued already. Perhaps these soldiers came with a larger group. These two didn’t make it, but their friends might have succeeded in taking Mike, Stewart, and Gary to safety. I wasn’t sure if that idea made me happy or worried—I would be thankful that the others were safe, but if the rescue party had already come and gone, then nobody was going to return to rescue me. I’d be stuck here for who knew how long. But then again, it was possible that my friends were dead long before the soldiers arrived. Or the soldiers came and got themselves killed before they could help anyone. Or the soldiers could have had orders to kill everyone on sight.

I decided I’d have to keep searching. If nobody else was there, I figured I’d try signaling whoever was firing those gunshots from the buildings across the lake.

Searching the soldiers for anything I could use—they were out of ammunition in both their rifles and sidearms, so I left their weapons. I took a gas mask, a water bottle, and a flashlight. But what I really needed was their clothes.

I reached down to undo the tallest soldier’s belt, but it was stuck, a dried rope of intestine wrapped and knotted around it. I knelt down, my bare knees breaking open the film of blood on the floor. With a better grip, I loosened the intestine’s grip on the buckle and unfastened the belt. But as I tried to pull off the pants, the material stuck to the soldier’s flesh, like they were melted to him. I pulled using all my strength, but they wouldn’t budge.

Something moved beneath my fingers. The soldier’s belly bulged and rolled. I let go of the pants and leaned back, realizing there was something writhing beneath his skin. As I got to my feet, a lobster-sized creature crawled out of the soldier’s belly, hissing and snapping at me. It was some kind of cockroach maggot hybrid with a human skull-shaped face. I backed away. The thing didn’t attack, but threatened me with its claws, hissing and snapping until I left it alone. It was the smallest cluster I had seen so far, but not the least dangerous. I decided to leave it alone.

As I left the room, dozens of clusters leapt down from the roof in my direction. I dropped to the ground. They weren’t after me. They were fleeing, jumping down over the railing into the black sludge. I didn’t realize what was spooking them until I saw a trail of green smoke pass the doorway. A toxic cloud was coming in.

I pulled the gas mask over my face and breathed slowly through the filter. The clusters that didn’t yet make it into the fluid screeched and writhed as they breathed the toxic gas. Most of them escaped into the murk, but a couple didn’t—left thrashing and gagging against the cement. I stepped past them carefully but quickly, one foot at a time, worried they might coil around my legs with their spidery limbs. They hissed and coughed, then died. The air was even more toxic than I expected it to be. Wire District smog was incredibly toxic, but was never this lethal. It would take hours or days of breathing in the stuff before you’d die from it. The stuff usually just made people sick.

At first, I wondered if the creatures were especially susceptible to the toxins in the smog. I wondered if it wasn’t so bad for humans. If that were true, then the clouds would be a great defense against these things. The clouds would be a blessing. But after walking through the green mist for a couple minutes, I realized just how toxic the stuff was.

The cloud left a green powder against my bare skin, which at first was just itchy and irritating, like rolling around in a pile of asbestos. Then it burned. The more I tried to rub off the green residue, the more it became inflamed. Blisters spread across my neck and shoulders. I had to get out of it as quickly as possible.

I ran into the nearest hotel room and tried placing the broken door back into position even though it was off of its hinges. It didn’t do much good. The second I entered the room, the smog thickened. It was so dense that the only thing I could see outside the hotel room was a dark green cloud. I couldn’t see even an inch past the window. Inside wasn’t much better. The gas wasn’t as thick but it was pouring in through the cracks in the door.

I backed away and tripped on a body, landing on its squishy back. When I looked down, I noticed it was the remains of an unfinished Compound Man—the one Hydra and Stewart tried to save after the electricity went out. The thing was still there, rotting, covered in tiny insect-like clusters.

There was only one way I could think of to escape the gas. I crawled into the bonding chamber and closed the lid. It was designed to be airtight so fluids couldn’t escape. I wasn’t sure how much air I’d have in there, but it was my only chance. I just hoped the lid didn’t lock on me and trap me inside.

Covered in rancid milky goo left over from the unfinished bonding that took place in this machine, I had to breathe through my mouth to prevent throwing up inside my gas mask. The odor was so strong that even the filters on my mask were not enough to block the smell. It was like the stench of raw egg whites left in a bowl to rot for three days.

Even in the machine, my skin burned and blistered. At first I thought I let too much gas inside when I entered the machine, but then I realized it was the green toxic residue still coating my skin. I had to get it off. There was no choice but to use the rancid fluid beneath me. It already washed away the powder on my backside and lower legs.

I tried to hold the vomit down as I rubbed the creamy fluid on my naked body. It was immediately soothing, but I could tell it wasn’t much less dangerous than the gas. I traded being covered in toxic chemicals for coating myself in germs and bacteria. This stuff was going to make me seriously ill, I just knew it. Once I got out of there I figured I’d have to find a way to completely sterilize my entire body.

I waited an hour or so before I left the machine. If the chamber wasn’t so low on oxygen, I would have stayed in there even longer. That gas cloud was big and potent enough to make the air around the hotel unbreathable for days. But when I opened the chamber lid, the air seemed mostly clear.

As I crawled out of the machine, wiping away the rancid fetal fluids against the edge of the lid, I wondered why the gas cloud was so strong. I’d never heard of the Wire District smog being that deadly. Sometimes the wind blows that stuff into other parts of the city. Smog that poisonous would surely kill dozens of people and most of the birds and wildlife in the area. It wouldn’t have been contained to this lifeless industrial district.

Then I realized that the flood probably had something to do with it. Not the flood itself, but the effect the flood had had on the surrounding factories. The machines running and regulating the toxic output were likely malfunctioning. But even more worrisome were the nuclear reactors in the area. If the flood was enough to corrupt the machinery, they could meltdown. If the radiation levels in the area increased I’d be in serious trouble.

It was daylight outside. The sun was up, though mostly covered by clouds. It still felt good to know the night was over. It would be much easier to see during the day.

The outside of the hotel was covered in green residue when I left the bonding room. It covered everything like a fresh coat of lime-green paint. I was worried about walking on the stuff in my bare feet, but I didn’t have a choice. The bottoms of my feet were not tough and callused. Because I had recently joined, my feet were soft and tender like those of a newborn.

Beneath the ladder leading up to the roof, I ran into another body. It was a soldier, leaned against the wall, a rifle in his mouth. Although the wall was covered in green powder, I could still make out where the chunks of brain dried against the side of the building. Both of his legs had been broken. He must have shot himself before the clusters could get him.

I took his boots, pants, and undershirt. There wasn’t a parasitic creature living inside of him to stop me. Before I put on the clothes, I used the inside of his coat to wipe off as much of the rancid slime as possible. It didn’t do much to remove the odor. I still smelled like a gangrenous wound, but it felt good to remove the sticky substance.

After getting dressed, I took the rifle out of the corpse’s mouth and checked the clip. It still had a few rounds left. Not enough ammo to protect myself for long, but I felt safer with a few shots than none. The soldier was missing his sidearm. The holster was cut in half, probably damaged by whatever it was that broke his legs. There wasn’t any extra ammo on him.

As I climbed the ladder to the roof, I saw a pillar of smoke rising from somewhere above. There was a fire up there. I wondered what it could be. Perhaps the hotel was on fire. Perhaps something happened to the generator. Perhaps it was even a signal fire, which would mean there could be people camped up there, waiting for rescue. But when I got to the top of the ladder, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The fire was coming from the back of a ship.

I didn’t know how the hell it got up there, but there was a massive boat lying on top of the hotel. It was crooked, half-submerged in a crack in the rooftop. It was some kind of military ship. Perhaps it was where the soldiers came from.

The roof was covered with bodies, pieces of dead clusters and soldiers were scattered about. It was the aftermath of a battle, the place these men had their last stand. I went toward the smoking boat, hoping there might be supplies I could possibly scavenge, or perhaps there was a radio I could use to contact help.

As I crossed the roof, I saw movement within the boat. Somebody was on board. Whoever it was, they didn’t notice me coming toward them.

“Hello?” I called out. “Is anyone there?”

When they heard my voice, they ducked down, hiding inside the vessel. They didn’t respond. I wondered if it was actually a human. It could’ve been a cluster. I decided not to get any closer until I knew for sure.

“Hello?” I called out again.

Then I remembered how unnerving my voice must have sounded. It wasn’t quite human.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” I held my rifle out, the barrel pointed at the air.

A figure crawled out of the ship. He wore a bright orange hazmat suit that covered his entire body. Staggering with a limp, grunting as he stepped. Before I could ask him anything, he pointed a sniper rifle at me and told me not to move. It was the same sniper rifle Porn Eyes was using. When I saw it, my heart sank in my chest. If this was the killer who was after me I just made a big mistake. He could have taken me out without so much as a fight.

“Who are you?” asked the man in the hazmat suit. His voice was shaky, both from worry and exhaustion. Even though I couldn’t see his face, he looked like he’d been through hell. “Where the hell did you come from?”

I recognized that voice. It wasn’t Porn Eyes. It was Mike. Of all the people who could’ve still been alive, it had to have been that asshole.

“Mike?” I asked.

He was taken aback. His weapon lowered. He stopped shaking.

“Who the fuck…” he said.

“It’s me,” I said, taking off the gas mask covering my face.

Seeing my face didn’t help him to relax. In fact, it only made him tighten his grip on the rifle. He didn’t recognize me in my new form.

“What the fuck are you?” he asked. I guess my face was just as inhuman-looking to Mike as it was to me.

“Relax,” I said. “I just came out of the bonding machine.”

He removed the mask on his hazmat suit, revealing his filthy, scruffy face. He’d obviously been through a lot since I’d last seen him. His skin was peeling from sunburn, dried out from dehydration. He had scabs on the side of his forehead from some kind of head wound. A bruise under his left eye.

“Hydra?” he asked. His smile was absent of two teeth.

I nodded. “And Pixie. We’re called Stork now.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

I looked at him with a confused expression, not sure how he could possibly know my new name already.

“It’s about time you woke up,” he said.

Shipwreck

Mike led me into the boat, insisting we get out of the open before he’d say another word to me. The inside of the ship was reinforced with sheets from the outer hull, a stronghold to keep out the creatures. It was filthy, full of trash and chunks of dead clusters. Nobody else was inside. Mike was all alone.

“Gary said you’d wake up eventually,” Mike said, brushing a pile of green dust off of a bench so that I could sit. “I didn’t believe it, but here you are. Just as he said.”

I sat down on the bench as Mike closed the makeshift door on his shelter.

“How long have I been out?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, sitting in the seat across from me. “It feels like it’s been weeks, but I guess it’s only been days. Four or five days.”

“That long?”

“You never should’ve gotten into that machine.” Mike shook his head at me. “What the hell were you thinking, anyway? Did you actually think the backup generator would have enough power for that?”

I shrugged. Part of me knew what I did was stupid. The other part had no regrets. For all I knew, the bonding might have saved my life.

“After you went missing, Gary looked everywhere for you. It wasn’t until the second day that we found your clothes in that hotel room. We couldn’t fucking believe it when we realized you’d gone into the machine.”

“I could imagine…”

“Gary said you’d come out eventually. He was waiting for you in that room for at least a day. I thought he was a fucking idiot to think you’d ever come out.”

I nodded and looked down at my fingers. They seemed even more unusual in the sunlight. They were long and thin in the middle but the knuckles were large and bulb-shaped. The skin was white as paper.

“What happened to Gary?” I asked.

Mike snorted. “Dead.”

“And Stewart?”

“Dead. Everyone’s dead. It’s just you and me now.”

“What happened to them?” I asked.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “Let’s eat first. We have to eat during the day. Those things usually don’t come out as much in the daylight.”

Out on the deck, the smell of meat roasting on the signal fire filled the air. Mike took a smoking chunk of blubber off of a skewer and blew on it, then shoved it in his mouth. I couldn’t tell what kind of meat it was. It looked like the side of a dog.

“What the hell is that?” I asked him.

“One of those things.” He took another bite and chewed as he spoke. “I figured since they’re always trying to eat me, I’d eat them first. They don’t taste as gross as they look.”

I just stared at him in disbelief as he ate. “You know those things are basically human, right?”

He paused for a second. A chunk of meat hanging out of his mouth.

“Thanks for reminding me,” he said.

Then he continued chewing.

I leaned against the side of the ship, trying not to inhale the smell of burning human-like flesh. “So what happened while I was out? Where did those dead soldiers come from? Why the hell is there a big ship on the roof of the hotel?”

Mike chuckled when I asked that last sentence. He must have just realized how absurd it was for me to wake up and find a boat on top of the hotel.

“They were the rescue team. Sort of. This wasn’t the only boat that came into the Wire District. On the second day, a helicopter spotted us, but they didn’t land. They called down to us with a megaphone and told us help would be one the way. But nobody showed up for hours. They didn’t know about the creatures then.”

“You didn’t warn them?”

“Gary tried to. I shut him up before he could say it, though. I was worried they wouldn’t come back if they knew.” He paused to eat some more of the meat. I could tell he struggled to imagine the meat was something normal like beef or pork. “They must have figured it out themselves not too long after that, because they sent in the military. Three ships full of soldiers drove in here, shooting the hell out of everything that moved. We all thought we were saved until we realized just how big those things out there really are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember the first cluster we saw, the big one that killed Dave or whatever his name was? Well, it turns out that was only a medium-sized one. There’s some out there ten times that. They’re behemoths. When the soldiers came in, they didn’t stand a chance. Their gunfire attracted a creature twice the height of the hotel. It sank two of the ships, then tossed this one into the air. It landed here. Most of the soldiers survived the crash, but they didn’t survive much longer than that. They were stupid. The more they shot at the creatures, the more it attracted them. They would have lasted longer if they hid.”

“Did anyone come back for them? Weren’t there reinforcements?”

“Yeah, but they didn’t fare much better,” Mike said. “There were a half dozen boats but the clusters got them long before they made it anywhere near the hotel. I think there’s a group that survived though, trapped in a factory across the lake.”

“How do you know?”

“I just assume so. I haven’t actually seen them, but there’s been gunshots in that direction for the past few days. Somebody’s alive over there.”

“And nobody’s tried to rescue them?”

He shook his head. “I guess they weren’t stupid enough to send any more boats in after that. For the past few days, there’s been helicopters flying overhead, but they won’t go anywhere near the water. The pussies are too afraid to get within tentacle-reach of the behemoths.”

“Do they know you’re still up here?”

“Yeah, probably. But they haven’t acknowledged me whenever they come through. They seem to be ignoring me. Fucking assholes.”

“What about the boat? Have you tried contacting anyone using the radio equipment?”

Mike shook his head. “We tried that first thing.” He pointed at the bow of the ship. The cockpit was so smashed up it looked like a boulder had hit it. “It’s damaged beyond repair.”

Before Mike could finish eating the rest of his charbroiled mutant creature, we heard the cackle and squeal of a cluster crawling up the side of the hotel.

“Get inside,” he said.

I followed him back into a barricaded section of the boat, crawling slowly and as quietly as I could. We watched from a boarded window as a scorpion-like creature scurried across the green roof toward one of the dead soldiers. The creature had a man’s head and a long tail that ended in a large claw, with thin pointed legs covered in sopping black fur. It clawed and chewed at the corpse meat, snorting and gurgling as it ate. The teeth in its human mouth were like that of a cat, tearing chunks away and swallowing them whole.

“They come to feast on the dead,” said Mike, rubbing grease on the chest of his hazmat suit. “We have to stay still and quiet. It will eventually go away.”

“How often do they come?”

“Not that often during the day. At night, the whole roof will be swarming with them. That’s when I really have to stay hidden. But when the sun’s out I’m reasonably safe, because there’s so much meat up here already they’re usually kept occupied. They just leave me alone.”

“What happens when there’s no more bodies for them to feed on?”

Mike didn’t respond. He obviously didn’t want to think about it.

The creature stopped eating. It hissed and squealed, then puked up the meat it had just devoured. Once the partially-digested flesh was a pile by its feet, the thing went into a coughing fit. Its cough sounded very much like a human cough, just a little higher pitched. It puked again.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

Mike was as perplexed as I was. “I don’t know. That’s never happened before. The thing looks sick.”

The cluster sniffed at the corpse, poking at it with the hand at the end of its scorpion tail. Then the thing backed off. It went to another body. But the same thing happened. It sniffed at it, poked at it, then hissed and squealed and moved on.

Once I realized what was wrong, I said, “The gas cloud…”

“What?”

“The toxic cloud that came through here a couple of hours ago,” I explained, pointing at the bodies. “It coated everything in that green residue. That stuff is poisonous.”

“So?” Mike said.

“So they can’t eat those bodies anymore. The meat is tainted.”

We watched as the creature went from body to body, searching for something to eat. It went down the other side of the building by the soldier’s body that was propped up next to the ladder. But had it come our way it might have went for us.

“That’s good,” Mike said. “Maybe now they won’t all gather here at night.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not good at all. If those creatures already see this place as their feeding ground, and there’s no food left to eat, they’re going to hunt for new food in the area. They’re going to come after us.”

The look on Mike’s face went from relief to panic. I guessed we’d find out what would happen once the clusters’ food ran out sooner than he thought.

I tried to convince Mike to move downstairs, into one of the hotel rooms, where it might have been safer to last through the night.

He shook his head. “It won’t work. That’s how we lost Stewart.”

Then he went on to tell me what happened the night the soldiers arrived.

“With all the gunfire, hundreds of those things were attracted to the hotel. The place was swarmed. We met up with a small group of soldiers who said they’d protect us, but they only made it worse. We tried to make a stand in the waiting room downstairs, but were quickly overrun. Myself, Gary, Stewart, and one of the soldiers made it out of there just in time, but the rest of the troops couldn’t get out. They lasted as long as their ammo. But the next room wasn’t any safer. We were able to get the door shut and barricaded with furniture, but one of the behemoths attacked. It shoved a massive tentacle right through the wall and coiled itself around everyone in the room. The thing was made of probably twenty people fused together. A hundred eyes watching us. A hundred arms grabbing at us.”

“How did you make it out?”

“The second that thing burst through the wall, I jumped inside of the bonding chamber. Gary was strong enough to fight off the tentacle’s arms so they couldn’t grab him, but Stewart and the last soldier weren’t so lucky. By the time Gary got me out of the machine, the others were gone. That big-ass tentacle-thing pulled them out of the room, then they disappeared into the water.”

I took a moment of silence to mourn Stewart. That poor guy deserved better. I couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like to die that way. He shouldn’t have even been there. If Mike didn’t bully him into joining with him he would have been at home and wouldn’t have gone through all of this. He wouldn’t have died. It was such a waste.

When I was ready to continue, I said, “But that doesn’t mean the rooms downstairs aren’t safer than up here. It seems like the only reason it was so rough down there was because of the gunfire drawing too many of them to your location. If we don’t use weapons we’ll have better chances.”

“But the behemoth wasn’t drawn to gunfire. It came long after the soldiers ran out of ammo. It found us anyway. Those things must have some kind of heightened sense of smell.”

I shook my head. “But if a behemoth wanted to get us in this boat it wouldn’t have any less difficulty than it would downstairs. And up here there aren’t any bonding machines to hide in as a last resort.”

“Trust me, this thing has held out much better than the rooms downstairs. Even the creatures that have tried to get to me weren’t able to get in. Gary and I did a good job securing this thing.” He patted the walls of the boat. “And protection from the clusters isn’t the only reason I stay in here. If the flood levels rise higher than the building this boat is the only thing that’ll keep me out of that sludge.”

“You think this thing will still float?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s better than trying to swim for it.”

“Have the water levels still been rising? It’s been days since I’ve been out. I thought the flood was as high as it was going to get.”

He nodded and looked away, toward the lake of black fluid. “Maybe. But you never know…”

I could tell there was no way to convince Mike to leave the boat. The guy seemed much different than when I first met him, the experience maturing him, maybe even humbling him, but he was still as stubborn as all hell. I decided not to argue with him any further. For all I knew, he was right. The boat could very well have been the best place to hide. Either way, I could tell it was going to be a rough night.

While waiting for the sun to go down, I used the time to clean the rancid fluid from my skin. There was rubbing alcohol in the boat’s first aid supply. I cleaned myself as thoroughly as I could, trying to sterilize every blister and tender area of my body.

When I took off my shirt to wipe down my chest, Mike didn’t divert his eyes. He examined every section of my strange new body. Part of me thought he was watching out of curiosity, since there wasn’t much else to do, but most of me could tell he was just being a creep. His eyes explored my flesh as though he wondered what it would be like to sleep with such an odd-looking freakish woman. Knowing that he could likely die soon would surely lower his standards. Luckily, I didn’t share those feelings. Mike might have thought I was only fuckable at best, but I actually liked my new body. I thought I was too good for Mike.

I pulled off my pants and wiped down my legs. The look on Mike’s face when he saw my penis was priceless. He jerked his head away and rubbed his eyes, pretending like he didn’t see it. But then the unexpected happened. His eyes returned to my naked body. He seemed even more interested in me once he learned I was a hermaphrodite. The creep really must’ve been out there alone for way too long.

“So what should we do until it gets dark?” he asked.

I shrugged. I really hoped he wasn’t trying to hit on me. In that situation, sex was the last thing I was interested in doing, no matter who it was with.

“Maybe we could…” he began.

Then a strip of skin peeled from my breast as I wiped it with the alcohol-soaked rag. I stared at it for a second. Mike winced at the sight of it. Any desire to have sex with me disappeared the second he saw that.

I wiped another part of my body and more of my skin peeled off. The flesh burned beneath.

“Fuck…” I said.

“What is it?” he asked.

I shook my head. It must have been from the gas cloud. When my naked skin was covered in that toxic green powder, it must have severely damaged the tissue. My skin peeled like I’d been through the worst sunburn of my life.

As I pulled a strip of my skin from my breast, a layer of nipple came off with it. The nipple imprint centered the page of skin like the yoke of a fried egg. When I held it up to show Mike, he turned and nearly puked in his lap.

It was a good thing I had recently bonded. It wouldn’t take long for my skin to rejuvenate. But I realized I would have to take extra caution the next time a gas cloud came through. If I wasn’t able to regenerate so quickly, the damage the poison caused would have been much greater. It might have even eaten all the way through my flesh like a highly corrosive acid.

Gunshots echoed through the district during the twilight hours before the sun went down. The clusters were beginning to get active, beginning to hunt for food. There weren’t any on the roof yet, but they were obviously crawling into other buildings in the area. I wondered if the shots were from soldiers or maybe from Porn Eyes. The killer could’ve still been alive out there.

I looked at the sniper rifle Mike clutched tightly to his chest. I wondered where exactly he got his hands on it.

“That’s the same rifle the killer was using, wasn’t it?” I asked him. “The one he used to kill Cecil with?”

The look in Mike’s eyes confirmed my suspicion before he needed to respond. “What happened to him? Is he dead?”

Mike shrugged. “No idea. He came after us the first night, sometime after you went into the bonding machine. When he found us, he was covered in that sludge. The bonding fluid melted half his face off. He looked almost as freakish as those creatures out there. He also looked fucking pissed. I guess he wasn’t too happy that you caused his raft to flip over, forcing him to swim through that shit.”

“How did you get away from him?”

“He fired a few rounds at us and hit Gary in the shoulder. He probably would have killed us all if it wasn’t for the creatures. They heard his gunshots and went after him.”

“Did they get him?”

“They hit him a few times but he wouldn’t fall. The weird thing is that he never tried to fight the creatures. He was focused on killing us. Even when they slashed him open with their claws, he didn’t turn his gun on them. He kept shooting at us. Even though we weren’t a threat to him. Can you believe that shit?”

I thought about it. It did seem pretty illogical. You’d think survival would be a higher priority than finishing a job.

Mike continued. “Eventually, one of the creatures knocked the gun out of his hands. Gary grabbed it. But before the big guy could take him out, the psycho jumped back in the sludge. He took off swimming. Gary aimed the rifle at him but then decided to save the bullet. We thought the guy was dead.”

“Was he?”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure the bastard survived somehow.”

“How?”

“Well, I’m not sure how he survived. But for the next few days, somebody was popping off rounds at us. He never hit us. Whatever weapon he used wasn’t very accurate at his range. But he kept trying. Every few hours another shot would hit the boat or the side of the hotel.”

“Does he still shoot at you?”

He shook his head. “I think he ran out of ammo. Or maybe a cluster got him. Either way, there’s been no sign of him. I’m sure he’s stuck in one of the buildings across the lake, half dead, trying to figure out how to get to us.”

“What a psycho…”

“You’re the one who brought him here.”

I nodded. He was right about that, even though I had no idea just how insane the killer was or how insane the situation was going to get.

“Did the bullet kill Gary?” I asked, wondering about whatever happened to the big friendly mutant.

“Huh?” Mike wasn’t sure what I was talking about at first. “What bullet?”

“The one that hit him in the shoulder.”

“Oh, no… That didn’t faze him at all. The guy was a tank of muscle. Plus, he healed pretty quickly once he pulled the bullet out, from recently bonding. No, he lasted for quite a while after that.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was an idiot. Got himself killed.”

“How?”

“He insisted on going to get help, like that Dave guy. After the ships stopped coming and the helicopters started ignoring us, he decided to swim for it. Maybe he thought that if the psycho guy could make it then he could make it. He saw what happened to the last guy who tried to do that. Dave lasted three minutes before his flesh melted off and a giant monster ate him.”

“So the same thing happened to him?”

Mike shook his head. “He made it a lot farther than Dave did. I think he even made it all the way to the next building.”

“So you didn’t see him die?”

“No, not with my own eyes.”

“Then how do you know he’s dead?”

“Umm, common sense. There’s no way he made it through that. Plus, he said he’d bring back help within twenty-four hours. He said that if he didn’t come back in that time frame I should assume he was dead. That was over fifty hours ago, so I’m assuming he’s dead.”

“But he could still be alive?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bet on it. Who knows how far he’d have to swim to get out of this stuff. This stuff could cover the whole Wire District for all we know. That would mean swimming through miles and miles of this sludge. I don’t think anyone could survive that.”

Predators

As the sun went down, the rooftop filled with clusters. Black hissing figures crawled over each other, snapping at each other, screeching and fighting over meat. Mike and I watched from the boat shelter, keeping as quiet as we could, unable to take our eyes off of them. I held the automatic rifle tightly in my hands. Mike held the sniper rifle. Neither of us planned to fire the weapons, but we would if we had to, if it was a last resort, even if we knew we wouldn’t likely last long after the others heard the blast.

I could hear their crusty exoskeletons brushing against the hull of the ship as they climbed over us, searching for food. It didn’t take long for the clusters to realize the corpses they’d been feasting on were no longer edible. They turned away from the bodies and scanned the rooftop for more flesh. When they couldn’t find any, they started attacking each other.

We watched as a many-limbed centipede cluster lunged at a smaller two-headed dog-shaped cluster. The centipede curled itself around the smaller creature, grabbed it with claws and human hands, then ripped its prey to pieces. The monsters didn’t seem to have a problem feasting on their own kind.

“Do they do this often?” I whispered to Mike.

“Shhh!” he hushed me. Then he whispered back. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“Maybe they won’t bother with us as long as they can eat each other.”

“Shhh!” he hushed me again. Then he whispered. “I hope so.”

Only the larger clusters attacked and devoured their own kind. The smaller creatures, those that were less capable of killing anything larger than human-sized, continued to hunt for flesh. They were more scavenger-like, less predatory. They were used to feasting only on dead flesh.

“Those are the ones we have to worry about.” I pointed at a plump hunch-backed cluster that wobbled from side to side as it walked, sniffing the rooftop for food with a hog-like nose. The thing looked like a cross between a pig and a spider, with a portly human face. It ignored the other clusters on the roof, sniffing along the outside of the boat.

The pig spider wasn’t the only scavenger. There were several of them sniffing and poking around. One of them that had large mosquito eyes and tiny baby hands toppled over Mike’s barbeque pit, trying to grab at the charred flesh he left behind. The fire was mostly embers by that point, but the creature still burned its soft tiny limbs while trying to get to the food.

“Those?” Mike whispered. “Those aren’t the problem.” He pointed at a larger cluster. “Those are.”

The creature he pointed at was the size of an elephant. The thing was mostly made of muscle. Five tree-trunk limbs dripping with black fluid. A belly that dragged across the ground. Its head looked almost exactly like that of a human’s, but it was larger than twelve people fused together and human legs growing out of its skull like locks of hair.

I shook my head at Mike. “The little ones will find us first.”

It didn’t take long for the scavengers to prove me right. The pig spider sniffed its way along the boat. It couldn’t see us, but it smelled us. The thing sniffed its way all the way onto the boat, to the entrance of our shelter. Then the thing began scratching at the door.

“What the fuck?” Mike cried, trying to keep his alarmed voice as quiet as possible.

“We need to get its attention away from us somehow.”

“How do we do that?”

I had no idea. The thing snorted and squealed as it scratched at the door. It quickly drew the attention of the other nearby scavengers. The mosquito-eyed cluster crawled away from the fire pit toward the entrance. This cluster was a bit more clever than the pig spider. When it saw the entrance blocked off, it circled around the shelter, looking for another entry point.

“Throw something out of the window,” I whispered. “Maybe they’ll go after it.”

Mike scanned the area around his feet. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Find something. Anything.”

The mosquito-eyed mutant sniffed and scratched its way along the outside of the shelter, digging at every little crack in the barricade.

Mike still couldn’t find something to use as a diversion. I pointed at the first aid kit I’d been using earlier in the day.

“Throw that,” I said.

He picked it up. “This? We need this.”

“We can get it back later. They probably won’t do anything to it. We just need it to make noise.”

He bounced the kit up and down. “This isn’t going to make much noise.”

“Just throw it.”

Mike complied, but he was too late. By the time he threw the kit, the mosquito-eyed mutant had already made it to the window. It saw his hands as he tossed it out. The scavenger wasn’t as nearly interested in what was thrown as it was in who threw it.

The cluster jumped at the window of the ship, flapping its useless fleshy wings, releasing high-pitched shrieks in alarm.

“Shut it up,” I yelled at Mike.

He didn’t know what to do, lying flat on the floor to hide. But the creature already spotted him. It knew where we were.

The shrieking mutant alerted other scavenging clusters in the area. The pig spider left the entrance and came to the window. Two limbless human maggot clusters slithered their way to us. And the smaller predators soon attracted the larger ones.

Mike no longer bothered speaking in a whisper. He cried, “This is all your fault. We should have just ignored them.”

I looked through the window on the other side of the ship. With the scavenger away from the shelter’s entrance, there was a clear path across the roof.

“We should make a run for it,” I said.

“Fuck that.” Mike held the sniper rifle like a teddy bear, lying as flat on the floor as he could. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“It’s only about twenty feet from the edge of the roof. We could just drop down to the fourth floor and duck into a bonding room.”

“Hell no. They’ll get us. They’re too fast.”

“The path is clear. If we go now we’ll make it.”

“Go yourself. I’m staying here.”

I looked back at the window. The mosquito-eyed creature shrieked, its baby arms reaching toward me. It was too big, but it attempted to squeeze its way through. I raised my rifle at it, pointing the barrel in its face, hoping that it realized the danger it was in. The creature wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. I was sure it had human memories somewhere in its brain. They all did. But the thing was either too deranged or too hungry to care.

Instead of pulling the trigger, I turned the barrel around and hit the creature with the butt of the gun. It squealed as I hit it, but the thing wasn’t deterred. I slammed the weapon harder into its face, smashing in one of its bulging eyes. But the more I hurt it, the more furiously it tried to get in. I hit it three more times. Then I backed up, ready to put my full force into one final blow. But before the weapon made impact, a row of jagged teeth closed around the scavenger’s head and bit the top of its skull clean off.

As the rest of the mutant disappeared into the large predator’s mouth, I found myself face to face with the elephant-sized cluster with the massive human-shaped head that Mike had pointed out earlier. Its bulbous turquoise eye peered through the window at me. Unlike the other clusters, this one appeared to have some human intelligence. I could see it in the way it looked at me. Its mouth drooling at my sight.

I didn’t know what else I could do. I raised the barrel of the assault rifle and emptied the clip right in the creature’s massive blue eye. Soupy white fluid splashed me in the face as its eyeball exploded. It shrieked and jerked back, then it slammed its tree trunk-sized leg into the hull of the ship.

The next thing I knew we were tossed backward. The boat flipped over onto its side. Most of the barricades Mike had created splintered apart, the walls split open. I fell back and cracked my head against the floor as the ship rolled. Everything became blurry. But the elephant-sized cluster wasn’t done with us yet, not by a long shot. It stood up on its hind legs and dropped its weight onto the side of the ship, crushing the hull in on us. Mike screamed and cursed me as the creature roared through the window at us. He held the sniper rifle in a death grip, but didn’t even think of using it.

Mike yelled, “We’re dead, we’re so fucking dead.”

I wanted to tell him that we weren’t dead yet. That we still had a chance. That we still had hope. I wanted to grab him and race out of the crumpled ship, jump over the roof to the fourth floor and find a more secure place to hide. But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even lift myself up. I just fell back and watched the room spin, as the massive creature crushed the ship like an aluminum can.

At first, I thought it was impossible. I thought I was imagining things. Surely I bumped my head a little too hard. She couldn’t possibly be real.

A woman dropped out of the sky and sliced through the massive beast’s throat with razor-like claws. She was a cluster, but she wasn’t like the other clusters. She didn’t look quite like a monster. Although she was almost twice the size of a normal human at ten feet tall, she was the most human-like mutant of any I’d seen.

Her long oily black hair whipped through the moonlight as she flipped from the collapsing beast to the smaller predators below. With one swipe of her claws, she cut down three scavengers, painting the side of the wrecked ship with their black blood. Her movements drew the attention of every cluster on the rooftop. They surrounded her, closed in on her like a wall of crispy flesh and conjoined limbs.

I couldn’t get a good look at her face, so I couldn’t tell exactly what her intentions were. I couldn’t tell if she was intelligent or just as mindless and ravenous as the other creatures. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to help us or if she was fighting off the other predators in order to claim us as her meal.

From behind, she was as beautiful as she was terrifying. A statuesque figure with lean, muscular flesh. Ridges of spine poked out of her arched back. Inky black fluid dripped down her naked gray-skinned body. She stood there, staring at the creatures as they cautiously squeezed closer toward her, breathing slow and steady breaths. Her arms were slightly longer than a human’s, extending down to her lower thighs, with talon-like fingers that ended in jagged points.

“What the fuck is that?” My voice was slow and quiet. It seemed to echo inside of my head.

I looked over at Mike, wondering if he was seeing what I was seeing. He was buried in a pile of rubble inside the mangled shelter across from me. Several cuts and punctures were speckled across his face and neck. His cuts weren’t that deep, but they bled profusely, leaking like miniature waterfalls down his orange hazmat suit. His breathing so rapid I thought he was going into shock.

“Are you okay?” But he didn’t seem to hear me over the horde of shrieking clusters.

The woman held her ground. No matter how many clusters gathered around her, she did not flee. The creatures stood three times her height, twenty times her mass, but she was not afraid of them. In fact, they seemed to be almost more afraid of her. Based on the speed at which they approached her, the creatures appeared apprehensive, not sure what to make of her.

As they hesitated, the woman made the first strike. She went for the biggest, fiercest creature among them. It was the monstrous centipede that killed Dave that first night. The thing lifted its mass high into the air as she charged it, hundreds of human arms squirming and whipping in her direction. Within a blink of an eye, the woman cut a wide gash all the way up the middle of the beast, running up its limbs like a fleshy staircase, using her talon-like fingers as a samurai sword. Blood sprayed out of its gaping wound like a geyser and piercing cries issued from the dozens of human faces spread across its serpent-like body.

It didn’t die right away. It fell to the ground, flapping and thrashing. The west side of the roof crumbled beneath its whipping tail, thumping repeatedly at the building like a wrecking ball. The woman didn’t bother finishing it off. She went straight to the next creature and cut open its throat. Then pierced her arm through another monster’s left eye. She was small but so much more deadly than the others. She knew exactly where to strike.

Because no two clusters were alike, their internal organs were always positioned differently from one being to another. They had multiple brains and multiple hearts, so destroying one vital organ would not necessarily kill the whole. The best way to kill a cluster was to target their arteries, force them to bleed to death. No matter how large they were, they’d all go down with a cut to their major blood vessels. Unfortunately, finding the right place to cut on beings with such varied anatomy was next to impossible. Yet this woman knew. She seemed to be able to figure it out within seconds of studying her victims.

After four more bodies fell lifeless, the clusters stopped fighting. They fled. Finally realizing the danger, they leapt from the roof and escaped into the black sludge. The woman didn’t follow. She stood in place, silently, blood dripping down her naked flesh. She didn’t move for a while. Just standing there, staring off into the distance.

“What’s she doing?” I asked Mike.

He didn’t say anything, just watched her with wide eyes. The woman seemed to be waiting there in case any of the clusters decided to return. I wondered if she really was trying to help us. Perhaps she was acting as a guardian, standing watch so that no other creature could attack us. If she was of human intelligence or had the memories of humans it was possible that she would wish to use her abilities to help us. If we had an intelligent cluster on our side it would go a long way in aiding our survival.

Then the woman turned around and faced us and my heart seized up at the sight of her. Her front was far more grotesque than her back. Her flesh was twisted and distorted. She was not human. She was just as horrifying as the others. Though her hair covered half her face, I could still make out cold fish-like eyes behind the oily black locks. Her mouth was wide with rows of razor sharp teeth. Her nippleless breasts appeared solid and unbreakable, the texture of insect armor. But the most disturbing sight of her was the fetus growing inside of her abdomen. She was pregnant, but her belly was wide open, like it’d been hollowed out. The tiny gray-skinned creature curled and squirmed inside of her. I wasn’t sure if it was actually a fetus or a miniature conjoined twin fused to the side of her womb, but the sight of it was more hideous than any creature I’d previously seen.

The woman came toward us. She moved slowly, almost mechanically. Her talons dripping a trail of blood as she moved. I looked at Mike and saw him cowering at the sight of her, trying to bury himself in the rubble of the ship.

“Shoot her,” I whispered to him.

But he wouldn’t move. He didn’t even acknowledge me. The woman stepped closer.

“Come on. She’s coming.”

He still wouldn’t respond. I leaned toward him and grabbed the sniper rifle out of his hands. He didn’t resist.

As the woman approached the wrecked ship, I pointed the rifle at her. I aimed for only a second, not able to look into her cold dead eyes. Then I fired.

“Where’d she go?” Mike asked, finally snapping out of it.

When I took my eye away from the scope, the woman was gone. I couldn’t tell whether I hit her or not. It was as though she just vanished the split second before the bullet left the gun.

“Did I get her?” I asked.

We crawled out from the wrecked ship. The woman was no longer in sight. The roof was empty. We were alone.

Morning

The clusters didn’t come back for the rest of the night. As dawn was beginning to break, Mike lit a new fire and warmed himself next to it. We didn’t really know how to talk about what had just happened.

“What was she?” I asked.

“Just another cluster,” Mike said.

“But she was fast. She seemed intelligent.”

Mike shrugged. He stared into the fire, basking in the bittersweet glow of surviving another night. I didn’t recognize him as he sat there. Yet again, Mike seemed like a different person. It seemed like every night in this place aged him five years.

“I’ve seen her before,” he said.

I was surprised by his statement.

“Really? When?”

He took a while before he spoke again. “The first time I saw her, Gary didn’t believe me. I told him I saw a woman swimming casually through the lake, like it was the most normal thing to do in the world. She seemed perfectly human then. She didn’t seem like a cluster at all. I could swear she even smiled at me as she breast-stroked past the hotel.”

“Gary didn’t see her?”

Mike shook his head. “He saw her the second time. Later that day, we saw her climb over the railing covered in sludge. She looked right at us and then walked into the maintenance closet. She was just as casual about it as the first time I saw her, only this time I realized she definitely wasn’t a normal person. I also realized just how freakishly tall she was.”

“What was she doing in the maintenance closet?”

“I’m not sure. She dug through the boxes in there, as if looking for something. She took a couple of tools and then disappeared.”

“Tools?” I asked.

Mike nodded. “Yeah, a hammer and a screwdriver I think.”

I wondered about that. If she knew how to use tools she definitely had to possess human intelligence. Perhaps she wasn’t as deranged as she looked.

Then a strange thought came to my mind. “Do you think she’s the person who fixed the generator on the first night?”

Mike thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “I doubt she’d be capable of that. She’s just a freak.”

“Gary was a mutant and he was intelligent. I don’t see why she couldn’t.”

Mike held out his hands against the warmth of the fire. He didn’t seem interested in a debate. “Nothing I’ve seen of her would make me think so. The other times I’ve seen her, she acted just like the other clusters. She hid under the water in the daytime, hunted smaller clusters at night. She’s just an animal. Nothing more.”

Once the sun came up and the clusters disappeared into the sludge, we went to sleep downstairs in one of the bonding rooms, curled up in the corners behind the bonding machines. We didn’t feel safe sleeping in the ruins of the ship. The thing had become a crumpled ball of jagged metal. We’d have to figure out something else for shelter before it got dark. We weren’t sure what we were going to do about it. We didn’t really think it was possible to last another night.

While we slept, someone left a present for us outside of the hotel room door. We didn’t notice until we woke up and stepped out onto the landing. It was food. Three cans of tomato soup, two cans of ravioli, a can of sardines and a can of Vienna sausages. They looked old and faded. Wet as though they’d been recently washed off.

“Where did these come from?” Mike asked.

I bent down and picked one of them up. It was sealed. Still edible. Somebody put these here.

“They probably came from one of the factories.”

Mike scanned the buildings around us. “But these factories don’t make food products. It’s illegal due to the toxins in the air.”

I shook my head. “Not products. From a lunch room.”

“But the workers here don’t stay for lunch. They come for only a few hours at a time, once a week, in full hazmat suits. They don’t have time to eat anything.”

I looked at the label of a can of ravioli. It was faded. Old. “But it wasn’t always that way. Ten years ago, there were workers who maintained the machines. They would’ve needed lunch rooms and likely would have taken canned food with them. Any other food could have been contaminated.”

“So this food is at least ten years old?”

“Probably. But it’s canned. It’s safe.”

“Who brought it here?”

That was the more interesting question. My first thought was the female cluster, but she looked so deranged, so feral. I couldn’t imagine she’d leave these for us. But there was somebody who helped us, the person who fixed the generator. That person could have been the female creature or it could’ve been somebody else, somebody hiding from us. But if that were the case, if it was a normal person hiding from us and helping us when we weren’t looking, how did they get these cans of food? It would’ve required somebody to swim through the sludge to get to the factories in the area. Only a cluster could do that.

“I think it was the woman from last night,” I said.

Mike shook his head. “She’s like an animal. She couldn’t do this.”

“Then who else could it have been? I think she did this to prove to us that she’s friendly. After I shot at her last night, she probably realized we were frightened of her and wanted us to realize that she’s here to help.”

He wasn’t convinced. “Did you see that thing? She was not interested in helping.”

“Gary was even more frightening than she was and he was a nice person.”

“But he was just deformed. Not one of those monsters.”

After I realized he wasn’t going to hear reason, I gave up on convincing him. He was just too stubborn. Who left the food didn’t matter anyway. What mattered was that we had something to eat, and it wasn’t the flesh of a half-human cluster.

I took the can of sardines. Mike took the canned hot dogs. We saved the rest for later. The sardines were delicious. Not as salty as I thought they’d be. Most of my components hated sardines. The rest only slightly enjoyed them. But my new body seemed to love them more than anything I’d ever eaten. Perhaps it was just because I was starving. Though it was possibly something else.

Food always tastes different after a joining. Just as colors look a bit different, depth perception is a bit different, smells are a bit different. When I ate those sardines, I tasted something I’d never tasted before, even though I’d had that same brand many times in many different lives. My new tongue, Stork’s tongue, seemed to love sardines.

After lunch, we left the bonding room and headed toward the roof. We hoped there was stuff we could salvage from the wrecked ship. On the way, we found a few more gifts that had been left for us. They lay next to the ladder, in the spot where one of the soldier’s corpses once lay: two automatic rifles with sound suppressors, a shotgun, a 64’ magnum, and a pile of ammunition.

“Where did this come from?” Mike asked. “All the soldiers were out of ammo.”

I thought about it. The weapons had been cleaned. They were spotless.

“You said there were two boats that were sunk?” I asked Mike.

“Yeah. They didn’t last long at all.”

“I think these were taken from those ships.”

The female cluster probably dove down there, collected these weapons, cleaned them off and gave them to us. Mike didn’t believe me, but he didn’t say anything about it. He was just happy to have some more protection.

I picked up a rifle and examined a sound suppressor. We could use these without drawing clusters to us. “These will be useful.”

We collected the weapons and ammo and then continued up the ladder. The roof was a graveyard. Dozens of dead clusters lay rotting in the afternoon sunlight. They looked like beached whales. Hundreds of miniature clusters crawled on them, feasting on their remains. I had to hold my nose as we walked through the maze of dead things. Mike pulled on the mask of his hazmat suit.

When we got through the corpses to the other side of the roof, we realized something was different. The wrecked ship that Mike had been using as shelter was no longer there. The whole thing just vanished.

“What the fuck?” Mike yelled, stepping through the area where we left it.

There were still pieces of the ship scattered about, but the bulk of it was gone.

“Perhaps one of the behemoths got it and took it into the water.”

“During the day?”

I went to the edge of the roof and looked down at the sludge below. Below us, tied to the fourth floor railing, there was a ship. At least, I thought it was a ship. It didn’t look like any boat I’d ever seen.

“What is it?” Mike asked, looking down at the strange craft.

Somebody, or something, had pieced together a new vessel out of the three ruined military ships—the one from the roof and the two that were sunk. Only this one didn’t look anything like the original ships. It was smaller, but armored. Metal spikes poked out of the sides, jagged blades lined the rims. The thing was cluster-proof. Any creature, even a behemoth, that tried to attack this thing would severely injure themselves.

“I think she built this for us,” I said.

Mike didn’t doubt me this time, but he was still shocked by the sight of it. His eyes wide in disbelief. “How did she make it so fast? We were only asleep for six hours.”

“I have no idea. Maybe she has friends.”

Mike didn’t like the sound of that. Neither of us did. But the only logical explanation for how this could’ve been built in less than six hours was that a whole crew of people worked together on it.

“Do you think it really works?” Mike asked.

I shrugged. “Let’s go find out.”

We didn’t realize just how odd the ship was until we went downstairs and got a closer look. It didn’t have an engine. The thing was bicycle-powered, like a massive pedal boat. The thing was also a strange shape. It had a tail that dangled in the water, arm-like fins floating along its sides. It was designed to look like a cluster.

As we stared at the thing from the fourth floor, neither of us knew what to make of it.

“Do you think it really works?” Mike asked.

“We should try it.”

I climbed over the railing and pulled myself into the patchwork boat. Mike handed me our weapons and food one at a time, then I helped him come aboard. The floor was rough and lumpy and most places hurt to walk on, even while wearing boots. I sat down on one of the metal slabs that were supposed to be seats and put my feet on the pedals. Mike did the same.

“Ready?” I asked.

We rotated the pedals three times and the boat moved forward three feet.

Mike’s face lit up. “It really works!”

I held my hands out to the steering wheel in front of me. Of the four pedal stations on the boat, only mine had a steering wheel. We pedaled again and I turned the boat to the right, a few feet away from the hotel. Then I stopped.

“We can do this,” I said. “We can get out of here.”

“But what about the creatures? Won’t they attack us?”

“Maybe. But maybe not. There’s no engine so it won’t be loud. We’ve got spikes covering the exterior, so anything that touches the outside will hurt itself, even the behemoths. Outside of getting rescued by helicopter, this is our best bet. We should go.”

Mike wasn’t ready to leave yet. He was afraid. You could see it in his chunky face. “I don’t think so. We should wait here for rescue. Let’s use this thing as a last resort.”

I shook my head. “No, we should go right now, while it’s still daylight. You know we won’t last another night otherwise.”

“But those creatures could capsize this thing. We don’t know how safe it really is.”

“Wouldn’t you rather die trying?”

He shook his head. I would just leave him if he wasn’t willing to come, but I needed him to pedal the boat with me. I had to convince him.

He said, “The Wire District is too big. There’s no way we can get out of here without being attacked by a cluster. And it’ll probably get dark before we can pedal our way out of this place.”

“The clusters all originated from this bond hotel. This is the most dangerous place to hide. The further we get away from here the safer we’ll be.”

He still wasn’t convinced. Such a stubborn bastard.

I pointed at a building across the lake. “What if we just went from here to there?” I asked him. “We’ll just go from this building to that one. If it seems safe enough we’ll continue on. Maybe those soldiers we heard are still over there.”

Mike looked out at the black water. He’d seen far bigger, grislier creatures than I’d seen out in this sludge. I didn’t blame him for not wanting to go.

I stood out of my seat and went to the side of the boat. I untied the rope on the railing and pushed off.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

But it was too late, we were already floating away from the hotel.

“Let’s go,” I said, as I sat back down in the driver’s seat.

Mike didn’t have a choice then. As I pedaled, he curled his fingers into fists in his lap and pedaled with me, matching my strokes. He didn’t look at the water. He just concentrated on his feet.

“It’ll be over soon,” I told him. “One way or another.”

We pedaled through the sludge. The steering was surprisingly accurate and easy for its strange shape, but it took a lot of strength to pedal the thing. Only sixty feet away from the hotel and our legs were already beginning to tire. If the entire Wire District was flooded we would have to pedal for several miles. I had no idea how we’d be able to last that long.

There was no sign of the creatures at first, though we knew they were everywhere, hundreds of them somewhere beneath us. It wasn’t until we were halfway to the next building that we saw one. A tentacle made of fused together human torsos coiled across our path, weaving in and out of the ink. We stopped pedaling, stayed still, praying it didn’t notice us. We were stuck in the center of the lake. No way of surviving the swim if our boat was capsized.

The creature caused ripples across the fluid, bobbing our vessel back and forth. Mike looked around frantically, as though trying to find somewhere to escape to. But there was no way off of the boat. It was still hundreds of feet to the closest structure.

“It’s just passing through,” I told Mike, in as calm a voice as possible.

He grabbed one of the assault rifles and pointed it out the window. The creature submerged before he could take aim.

“Not yet,” I told him, touching his shoulder. “You’ll only piss it off.”

Even though the machine gun had a sound suppressor, it wasn’t worth using on the larger clusters. The bullets wouldn’t do much damage. If the thing attacked us the shots might drive it off like a black bear from a beehive, but we’d only do it if we had to.

We watched as the thing snaked through the fluid and passed us by. Mike fell back in his seat, releasing a puff of air.

I waited until the thing was out of sight. “We’ll probably run across a lot of them out here. You can’t lose your shit every time we see one.”

Mike got defensive. “I didn’t lose my shit.”

“Just keep calm. You shoot one at the wrong moment and it might get us both killed.”

“I wasn’t going to shoot it.”

I didn’t want to argue with him. “Let’s just keep going.”

Factory

When we arrived at the closest building, we couldn’t find a way in. It was some kind of factory with tall exterior walls. I didn’t see many windows, at least within reach. The black water splashed against the cold, gray walls as we pulled up alongside the building. A humming sound came from within. There were still machines running inside.

“This is where a lot of the gunshots came from, I think,” Mike said. “The soldiers might still be in there, if they survived.”

I nodded. “If we can find a way in we’ll check it out.”

We pedaled around the other side of the building. The humming was louder here. The factory machines were still running beneath the water, causing the black fluid to ripple and rumble. We could feel it vibrating the ship.

“Over there,” Mike said.

There was a row of windows in the corner of the L-shaped structure. Some windows were level with the black sludge. They were broken, the fluid pouring inside. The rooms within were surely half-flooded. There was another row of windows on the floor above it, but these windows were too high up to access. They also looked closed tight and locked.

I looked at Mike. “I don’t think we can get in here.”

“Sure we can,” he said.

“I think we should keep going.”

“Just get closer,” he said.

When we pulled up alongside the building, we looked through the lower row of windows. Inside, the building was dark. The room was flooded with black sludge.

Mike pointed up. “We could climb into those.”

I looked up at them. They seemed pretty high. “How? Do you have a ladder?”

“We can get up there.”

He climbed up onto the roof of the patchwork boat. I followed him. He could touch the bottom of the windows with the tips of his fingers, but there’s no way he’d be able to open it and climb through.

“I’ll boost you up,” he said.

“You’re going to drop me,” I told him.

“Just do it.”

I shook my head, but complied. “If I fall into that shit you’re a dead man.”

He put his hands together and held them out. I nearly slipped on his rubber hazmat gloves as I stepped on them, but I was able to balance myself against the side of the building.

Looking through the window, it was some kind of office on the other side. Desks, filing cabinets, shelves.

“Can you get it open?” Mike asked, grunting at my weight. Because of my height and dense bone structure, I was probably a lot heavier than I looked.

I placed my hands on the glass and tried to push it open, but the window was locked.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

As I pushed against the window, the boat floated backward. I lost my balance. Instead of pulling me back to safety, Mike panicked and just dropped me. He didn’t want to fall into the soup himself.

With my fingertips, I caught the edge of the window sill and held myself in place.

“You fucking asshole!” I cried, desperately trying to hang on.

“You slipped!” he said.

I didn’t care about his excuse. I had to focus on holding myself up.

“Give me your shoe,” I said.

“What? No.”

“I need to break the glass. Just throw it through the window.”

“I can’t. I’m wearing this suit. The shoes are built in.”

I held out my leg. “Then use my boot.”

Mike reached out to grab my foot, but hesitated. The boat was just a little too far for him to reach without the possibility of falling. When I looked back and saw the wavering expression on his face, I realized I was on my own. Holding myself with only the fingertips of my left hand, I took off my boot and slammed it through the window.

Shards of glass rained over my head. Using the bottom of the boot, I broke away any glass sticking up from the bottom edge of the pane. Then I climbed through.

I was in a cubicle within a large room of cubicles. The place was old. Covered in a thick layer of dust. Nobody had worked on this floor in decades. An old computer lay on the desk. It was ancient.

I poked my head out the window and called down to Mike. “Get the rope.”

“Is it safe?” he asked.

“I think so.”

He nodded and climbed back into the ship.

As I waited for him, I hit the power button on the computer monitor. The machine powered up. It still worked. I wondered if I could connect to the internet and call for help.

Mike called up to me and I went back to the window. He threw up the rope and I pulled it, bringing the boat closer to the window. Then I tied it up to the leg of the desk.

“Get the guns,” I said. “Just in case.”

He went back down into the ship.

When the screen came on, it displayed a company logo: Sexborg, Inc. It was a weird name for a company. I had never heard of it before. I grabbed the mouse and clicked on the screen. The ball of the mouse was so slow that it rolled sluggishly across the dusty mousepad. I hadn’t used a mouse since I was a child, so it felt awkward and stiff.

The screen asked for a username and password.

“Fuck…” I said.

I went back to the window just as Mike retrieved the last weapon from inside the boat. He handed them up to me one at a time. Then I reached out for him and helped him up.

When he got inside, Mike looked around. The place wasn’t what he was expecting.

“What is this place?”

I went back to the computer. “I have no idea.”

As I searched the computer for some kind of indication of what the password might be, hoping there was a sticky note plastered to the side of the machine, Mike looked at me and asked, “What are you doing?”

“This computer works,” I said. “I’m seeing if I can get online and call for help.”

“Do you know the password?” he asked.

“Not yet.” I opened the drawer of the desk. It was full of items. Notebooks, paperclips, pens, papers, a picture of a wife and child. I wondered why an employee would leave all this stuff behind.

“Do you even think anyone would help us even if we could contact them?” Mike asked.

I shrugged. “No, but if we can I’d like to try. For all we know, they might already have a plan for getting us out. If so, I’d like to know what that is.”

Digging through the desk, I found a day planner. That was the best chance of finding a written password. I flipped through the pages, searching for a note about the password, but all I saw were pictures of dicks. Not real dicks, rubber dicks. Sexy toys, I think. There were also a couple of pictures of rubber breasts and what looked like the inside of a vagina.

“What the fuck?” Mike asked.

I flipped all the way to the back. On the inside back cover, there was a list of usernames and passwords, combinations, and other information the employee was too lazy to commit to memory.

“Here we go,” I said as I identified the password for this terminal. “Username: MillerSJohn.” I typed it in. “Password: Boner Bomb.”

“Boner Bomb?”

I typed it in.

The screen faded out and then faded back in to the desktop. The speed of the machine was so slow. I wondered if it would even connect to the modern internet. I clicked on the Internet Explorer icon. That software hadn’t been in use for as long as I could remember. I doubted it would even work.

As I clicked the icon, a message popped up. It read:

Dear Valued Employee,

Due to continued misuse among Green Level Staff, the internet on this terminal has been discontinued for the time being. Employees are encouraged to use our very own SEXBORG-NET for intercompany communication and information retrieval. For your entertainment purposes, we now have a number of exciting new SEXBORG platform games available at SEXPLAY MARKETPLACE to enjoy during break periods, including TINGLE TUNNEL and BONER BOMB! We trust that you will enjoy our leisure entertainment responsibly and not abuse this generous addition to the SEXBORG network during work hours. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Pam in HR at username: WendigJPamela.

Thank you for your continued devotion to making SEXBORG, INC. the number one pleasure manufacturer in the Northwest.

Your Beloved Employer,

Nick Tanner, CEO.

As I scanned the message, I realized we wouldn’t be able to access the internet from this computer. I also discovered where the old owner of this workstation got his password from.

“No internet?” Mike asked.

I shook my head. “They have some kind of internal network. But if they have a corporate office downtown, there might still be a way to contact somebody from here.”

I clicked on the icon for SEXBORG-NET. After the screen loaded, a popup note appeared that read:

Welcome Valued Employee,

It has been 15,841 days since your last login to SEXBORG-NET. Please contact your department manager to schedule an additional 90,528 hours of overtime to make up for time lost. Thank you for your continued service to SEXBORG, INC. Your diligent contributions are greatly appreciated.

I closed the popup and went to the email box. Scanning through the messages, I couldn’t figure out which message would get me to the corporate headquarters. I clicked a random message.

It read:

TO: MillerSJohn

FROM: DetrickNDavid

SUBJECT: Boner Bomb

Hey John, you creamed me at Boner Bomb yesterday! Get it, creamed? LOL! How the hell are you so good at that game? Do you practice when Frank isn’t watching or something? Anyway, I want a rematch at lunch today. Loser buys winner a Model TF handjob. By the way, did you see those new models that came in last week? They look almost real, I kid you not. Those lucky Blue Level bastards are trying them out as we speak, and they don’t even have to pay for it! I better get promoted soon or I’m going to start murdering people. Yeah, I said murdering people! Are you monitoring this, Pam, you nosy nelly? PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE!!!! Go ahead and report that you humorless stick in the mud!

I clicked on the next message:

TO: DetrickNDavid

FROM: MillerSJohn

SUBJECT: RE: Boner Bomb

Dave, you really shouldn’t say stuff like that. You know Pam really does read all our emails. She’s got nothing better to do. And you know she has absolutely no understanding of sarcasm or hyperbole (sorry Pam). She’ll report you for sure. They take that stuff seriously now, ever since the Paul incident. Anyway, you’re on for Boner Bomb. But if I win I want a UKISS hummer. Those TFs are too damned abrasive.

I clicked on the next message:

TO: MillerSJohn

FROM: DetrickNDavid

SUBJECT: RE: RE: Boner Bomb

Do you really believe Paul did it? That pansy couldn’t hurt a fly. I think he was probably telling the truth. Those Model 6P4s are defective. I once tried one out and it flipped out on me for no reason. Nearly broke my arm off. I think corporate blamed Paul for the deaths just to save their asses. An incident like that would have shut this place down. Poor Paul. The sucker was the only one in accounting to survive and his reward was life in prison. Anyway, UKISS hummer it is. But we’re playing best of five. I’ll nail you this time, I promise. Get it? Nail? LOL!

The final message in the thread read:

TO: MillerSJohn, DetrickNDavid

FROM: WendigJPamela

SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Boner Bomb

Dear John and David,

I am writing to inform you that these messages are in violation of Sections V8720b, F2287C, and N625 of the employee handbook. I have reported this correspondence to your supervisors, as well to the corporate head office, who will decide on the suitable disciplinary action for your indiscretion.

PS – I’ll have you know that I possess a perfectly adequate understanding of sarcasm and hyperbole, John. Just because I follow the rules doesn’t mean I lack common sense.

I clicked away from the personal messages and scanned the inbox for something from corporate, but there was nothing but internal email. The last message mentioned that the HR person reported them to the corporate head office. If we found her terminal we’d definitely be able to contact the head office. If it still existed, that is.

“Anything?” Mike asked.

“We need to get to Human Resources. I think I’ll be able to contact them from there.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’ll see.”

We took our rifles and explored the sea of cubicles. Every desk was coated in dust and cobwebs, but none of the workstations were empty of personal belongings. Papers were spread across tables. Coffee mugs filled with ancient coffee residue. Pictures of loved ones. Coats on the backs of chairs. It was like all of the employees got up and walked out of work one day and nobody ever came back.

There was no sign that soldiers or clusters had come through there. Our footprints in the dusty floor were the first the office had seen in decades.

“This way,” I said, leading Mike into the hallway.

I followed the signs down the hall to the Human Resources department, then searched for Pam’s desk. Although each desk had a name plate, I didn’t need to read them to figure out which desk was Pam’s. I just had a hunch that it was the one on the end, all by itself, covered with framed pictures of a small black terrier with a pink bow on its neck.

“Here it is,” I said to Mike, sitting in the chair in front of the computer.

As I waited for the computer to power on, my eyes connected with a picture of a middle-aged woman with curly blond hair. The woman stared at me with her makeup-caked eyes. It had to be Pam. She held up the same black terrier from the other pictures, hugging it like a baby. Dressed in a peach-colored sweater and a tacky pearl necklace, she looked like an elementary school receptionist from 1986. Although she had a wide smile on her face, there was something about her expression that seemed angry and annoyed, as though she’d been yelling at whoever was taking the picture for not being able to get the shot perfect to her specifications.

When the computer asked for username and password, I typed in WendigJPamela for the username and just guessed the password. It was the name of her pet terrier that was written on every single photo on her desk: Princess Muffy.

I searched her email until I found two messages related to the correspondence on John’s computer.

I read the first message:

TO: WendigJPamela

FROM: WebberFrank

SUBJECT: RE: FWD: RE: RE: RE: Boner Bomb

Damn it, Pam, will you stop forwarding me these stupid messages already? This is the fifteenth this week. Don’t you have anything better to do than report on your coworkers? If you forward me one more private email conversation it better be unyielding proof of corporate espionage or I’ll have you reassigned to cleaning up lubricant on Red Level.

The second message was an automatic response from the corporate head office. I clicked on the email address and wrote a message to them. I put URGENT in the subject line and then explained our story. I told them to contact the authorities and then respond immediately. When I clicked send, it seemed to go through.

“What now?” Mike asked.

“We wait,” I said. “There’s no telling whether anyone will get this or not. This whole company seems abandoned. I wonder if a corporate office still exists after all these years.”

“The factory machines are still running in here,” Mike said. “We heard them from outside. Maybe it’s just this floor that was abandoned.”

“Should we try a different floor?”

“Sure.”

I said, “When we return, we’ll see if anyone got back to us. If there’s no response we’ll give up and move on.”

We headed out of the department into the hallway and went toward the stairs. After visiting the bond hotel, it wasn’t very surprising that there was another long-abandoned building in the Wire District. This place really was like some kind of industrial ghost town. Somebody should’ve bulldozed over the whole place a long time ago.

The stairwell was covered in black sludge. Something had come up from the submerged lower levels. Footprints splattered the steps leading to the upper floors.

I turned to Mike. “You still want to go?”

He nodded. We were armed and any clusters that got in there were likely not much larger than human-sized. We’d be able to defend ourselves better than at the bond hotel.

The entrance to the next level was a bright blue door with a sign that read BLUE LEVEL. There was a splat of black fluid on the door, but not on the handle. The sludge continued up to the next floor. It was as though the creatures had tried the door here, couldn’t get it open, and moved on to the next level.

When I tried the handle, it opened effortlessly despite having an electronic lock that required a combination.

“Perhaps the soldiers came this way,” I said.

There were no sounds coming from the inside when I opened the door. It was not likely the soldiers came through here. We weren’t sure the soldiers were even in this particular building anymore, if they were still alive.

The inside of BLUE LEVEL was similar to the lower floor. A maze of cubicles full of desks that had been long abandoned. Only this floor was a mess. Papers lay all over the ground, tipped over chairs, broken mugs and computer keyboards. It was as though the people in this room got out of there in a panic. I wondered if there was some kind of radiation leak or maybe a fire that sent everyone out of the building in a hurry.

The computers on this floor were not shut off as they were downstairs. The screens lit the room, some turned on their sides, some blinking on and off. They’d been lying there for over forty years, just waiting for the employees to return.

I looked into one of the workstations. There was a message open on the monitor.

The message read:

Dear Valued Employee,

We here at SEXBORG, INC pride ourselves on developing the most technologically advanced and user-friendly pleasure drones on the market. To ensure customer satisfaction, test models are available to all Blue Level staff members in the trial bedrooms. Visit your supervisor to add your name to the signup sheet. Your comprehensive feedback will be invaluable to our Research and Development team. Go forth and enjoy!

Thank you for your continued devotion to making SEXBORG, INC. the number one pleasure manufacturer in the Northwest.

Your Beloved Employer,

Nick Tanner, CEO.

We walked through the row of cubicles, pointing our rifles in the direction we stepped, ready for anything that might jump out at us. I wasn’t sure if we were actually ready for a fight if we got into one. Carrying the weapons was awkward. I wasn’t used to it. None of my components knew much about shooting firearms. They were mostly all urban and suburban types. The .64 magnum was stuffed down my pants, poking me in the crotch. Mike didn’t seem to be doing much better with the combat shotgun strapped to his back. It kept falling off his shoulder or hitting him in the butt as he walked.

On the other side of the room, there was a row of doors labeled TRIAL BEDROOMS. Each room had windows but most of their curtains blocked our view within. There was a sign plastered between the rooms.

It read:

Now available for review: the brand new DD-50 Model! As you may know, our DD-50s are an upgraded version of the old 6P4 Model, using our patented state-of-the-art Real Flesh pleasure technology. We hope you all do your part and give the new DD-50 a thorough evaluation.

There was one room in the corner with the curtains drawn. I went to it, rubbed dust from the glass, and looked within. Standing next to a gray mattress, staring directly at me, was a woman with bright pink skin. I jumped back when I saw her, falling over myself. The magnum fell out of my pants and clunked against the floor.

“What the fuck?” Mike asked.

When I got a closer look, I realized it wasn’t a real person. It was like a mannequin, wearing red lacy lingerie. She was one of the pleasure drones mentioned in the computer messages.

“It’s just a machine.”

“A robot?” Mike asked.

When I opened the door, the machine’s eyes lit up and she looked at us. I stepped back. She shifted her weight to one side and smiled with rubbery red lips.

With an electronic seductive voice, it said, “Good evening, Valued Blue Level Employee. How may I serve you today?”

Then she paused, blinking at us, waiting for a response.

We moved closer to it, examining its smooth pink skin and haunting white eyes. It didn’t have any hair, but there was a Velcro pad on the center of its skull for swapping out different colored wigs. It was covered in dust as well as scuffs and dirt-smudges from overuse. I couldn’t imagine anyone actually wanting to have sex with the thing.

I said, “It’s one of the pleasure drones this company manufactured.”

“They make sex robots? How come I’ve never heard of these things? I’d sell my left nut to buy one.”

I shrugged. “This place is old. The company probably went out of business before we were born. They might never have made it to market.”

“Still, though…” Mike rubbed the machine’s hip up to her breast and squeezed. “You’d think some other company would have used this technology at some point.”

Out of curiosity, I grabbed the machine’s other breast. It felt less real than a silicone implant. It was squishy like it was filled with foam padding beneath a thin layer of plastic.

I said, “Holographic technology took over the sex industry. Maybe it was cheaper and more profitable. Who knows?”

The machine blinked, waiting for a command to be entered.

Mike smiled at the machine and said, “Blowjob.”

The machine didn’t move.

“Don’t,” I said.

“Why not? I want to see what it does.”

“We don’t have time.”

Mike tried again, “Doggy style.”

No response.

“Reverse Cowgirl.”

No response.

“Sixty-nine.”

No response.

I grabbed him by the shoulder. “Let’s go. There’s nothing here.”

I practically had to drag him out of there. The machine continued staring at us until we closed the door. Then it powered off.

We left Blue Level and went up to the next floor, following the trail of sludge to Yellow Level. The sign above the door read RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.

“This is where they entered,” Mike said, pointing at the tracks leading through the door. “We should keep going to the next floor.”

“But look there.” I pointed at another group of footprints leading from upstairs down into this room. Human boot prints. “The soldiers came through here.”

“How do you know they’re soldiers?”

I stepped on the sludge with my boot, the one I took from the dead soldier, creating a footprint that matched the others.

“They definitely came this way,” I said.

We pushed open the door to find a large open room without windows. It was darker than the previous floors. The few lights that worked flickered and hummed. This floor was even more destroyed than the last one.

Two soldiers lay dead at our feet. They’d gotten into a fight with something. There were sludge marks on the floor, but no sign of clusters. Whatever trailed the black fluid in there arrived after these men had died. The tracks continued deeper into the room. We weren’t sure if there were any living soldiers in the place, but at least we knew this was the right building where we’d heard shots fired. Bullet casings lay scattered across the floor.

We walked farther into the department, passing work stations with glowing computer screens. The work areas were much different here than the previous floors. The desks were covered in hardware. Computer chips, mechanical body parts, plastic eyeballs and electronic genitalia.

I passed one desk that was still occupied. A man sat there, staring at his monitor, holding down the letter Q on the keyboard.

“Hello?” I asked.

When I moved closer, I realized the man was not alive. There was a large hole in the back of his head. Not a bullet hole, more like a stake had been driven through his skull and poked out the other side. It wasn’t a soldier. It was a mummified corpse. An employee who had died there decades ago, still holding down the keyboard to produce millions of pages of Qs.

“What happened to him?” Mike asked.

Then I realized the others. The whole room was filled with long-dead bodies. Skeletons scattered across the beige carpeting. The workers seemed to be attempting to flee when they died.

“Murdered. They were all murdered.” I paused to look down at a body with its face caved in. “Whatever happened, they’ve been dead a long time.”

A beam of light flashed at us from across the room. We followed it into a nearby office. There was a soldier lying with a flashlight in his hand, fresh blood leaking out of a hole in his lower abdomen. He’d been recently killed. I examined him. There was no sign of black fluid in the room or on his body.

“He wasn’t killed by a cluster,” I said.

I went to the computer in the room and shoved a skeleton out of the chair to sit down.

“What are you doing?” Mike asked, following me around to the other side of the desk.

“Looking for answers.”

I clicked open a recent thread of emails:

TO: SnyderLTracy

FROM: McDowellPeter

SUBJECT: DD-50 Units

Hey Trace,

I’ve been having problems calibrating these DD-50s you sent over. Who the hell designed this hardware anyway? The things are unnecessarily strong and have the delicacy of a tank. No wonder they keep injuring the testers on Blue Level. I’ve tried swapping out the chips but that only seems to make the problem worse. I need to speak to someone from engineering, preferably the idiot who put these models together. I have no idea how to resolve the issue on my own.

TO: McDowellPeter

FROM: SnyderLTracy

SUBJECT: RE: DD-50 Units

Sorry, pal. Can’t help you. Those models weren’t designed in-house. I’m not sure if we got the schematics from an independent contractor or another manufacturer, but they’re not ours. I tried finding contact information but the files are locked. Only management can access them. Have you tried getting help from Emery? That guy’s a whiz at figuring out this sort of thing.

TO: SnyderLTracy

FROM: McDowellPeter

SUBJECT: RE: RE: DD-50 Units

Emery refused to help me. Once I mentioned I had DD-50s on the floor, he mumbled some excuse and went for the nearest exit. The guy looked terrified. I’m starting to wonder if he knows something I don’t. The last time I activated a unit, the thing came at me. I swear it was trying to kill me. What the heck is going on with these things? Can you talk to one of the top floor suits for me? I’m seriously considering a transfer to Red Level.

I opened the last email. It was marked unread.

TO: McDowellPeter

FROM: SnyderLTracy

SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: DD-50 Units

Pete,

You’re not going to believe this. I did some asking around and figured out where the DD-50s came from. They were originally assault drones we purchased from a military contractor. Same with the earlier model, the 6P4. Explains a lot, doesn’t it? I can’t believe the suits thought we could just add new skin and programming and pass them off as pleasure models. They’re freaking war machines. If I were you I wouldn’t just transfer to Red Level, I’d look for a completely different line of work. You don’t want to be anywhere near those things if they revert back to assault mode.

Just when you thought working in this place couldn’t get any worse, eh? Anyway, I hope this message reaches you in time. Take care of yourself.

“Let’s get out of here,” I told Mike.

He completely agreed.

As we left the office, we heard a scream coming from deeper inside of Yellow Level. A man’s scream. I looked at Mike, wondering if we should check it out. He hesitated for a second, then gripped his rifle and nodded in agreement.

We moved in the direction of the scream, realizing the trail of black sludge also continued in that direction. Perhaps a soldier encountered the cluster that got in from the lower levels.

Another scream. This time it was farther away. Whoever it was, he was running in the opposite direction as us.

“We’ll never get to him in time,” Mike said. It sounded like he was changing his mind.

“Keep going. We’ll get to him.”

We went through a warehouse full of broken down drones. Dozens of metal arms, legs, and rubbery breasts lined the shelves. Several long-dead corpses lay between the cases. One body was on a table next to a headless drone, wrapped around it like he died crying in its arms.

The trail of sludge continued into the next room. It was too dark to continue without using the flashlights mounted on the assault rifles. When I turned my light on, I found myself face-to-face with a blue-skinned drone. It stood there, motionless, staring at me with cold white eyes.

This place was some kind of testing area. It was filled with completed drones, all powered off. There was a sea of them spread across the room, standing in the darkness like figures in a wax museum. The puddles of black sludge faded in this room. We weren’t sure where to go. There were several exits that the soldier could have fled through.

“What now?” Mike asked.

“Wait and listen,” I said. “If he’s still alive we’ll hear which direction he went in.”

As we waited, I went to a computer station near a group of drones. There was a message pulled up on a glowing screen. Whoever was working here must have taken off immediately after reading it.

The message read:

Dear Valued Employee,

It has come to our attention that a small number of our new DD-50 Models may have escaped from the seventh floor holding facility and might possibly be wandering about the building. It is also a slight possibility that these models have malfunctioned, temporarily converting them into indestructible man-hungry killing machines. If you happen to see a DD-50 Model approach your workstation it is advised that you do not attempt to enjoy its patented state-of-the-art Real Flesh pleasure services at this time, for this could possibly result in an agonizing horrific death. The suggested course of action is to remain calm, avoid all interaction with the DD-50 Model pleasure drone, call a security representative and inform him of the situation, then return to work while awaiting help to arrive.

Thank you for your continued devotion to making SEXBORG, INC. the number one pleasure manufacturer in the Northwest.

Your Beloved Employer,

Nick Tanner, CEO.

I looked up from the monitor when I heard a thumping sound coming from the south exit. We aimed our rifles and moved toward it. The noise was steady, one bang each second, like the ticking of a clock. It was a deep, knocking sound like a hammer against a door.

“Do you think it’s him?” Mike asked.

I shook my head. “Could be anything. Be ready.”

We went through the south exit into a cafeteria. Rows of tables and chairs filled the room. Forty year old lunches lay half-eaten across the tabletops, mostly turned to dust on their shriveled Styrofoam plates.

The thumping sound came from the other side of the room. I couldn’t see what was making the noise in the shadows, but I could see movement. A figure shifting up and down. I stepped across a carpet of pulverized skeletons and dusty rags, trying to get a closer look.

I pointed the flashlight at the shadows, illuminating a nude woman squatting over a dead body. She looked human, exactly like a human. Wavy red hair flowed down a tanned freckled back. Sweat-like fluids glistened against the light. The texture of her skin was so lifelike, with wrinkles and pores and moles. For a split second, I almost thought she was real. But the way she moved made it obvious she was a machine.

She straddled a freshly killed soldier, fucking his corpse with the force of a garbage truck. Her metal crotch had crushed all the way through his pelvis, bisecting him in the middle. His intestines splattered against her naked body as she continued her sexual assault. The loud thumping sound we heard was her crotch slamming against the concrete floor beneath the soldier, pounding into it like a sledgehammer.

“Holy shit!” Mike cried.

The machine stopped when she registered Mike’s voice. In a single fluid motion she stood up and turned around, revealing an absurdly large pair of gore-splattered breasts that jiggled more like water balloons than realistic mammary glands. The plumpness of her lips, length of her eyelashes, and curve of her waist were also exaggerated to an absurd degree. She walked forward, approaching Mike with her ridiculously large breasts bouncing with each step.

With an electronic emotionless voice, she said, “Good evening, Valued Yellow Level Employee. How may I serve you today?”

Mike panicked. He raised the assault rifle to her chest and pulled the trigger. Bullets sprayed across her torso, but had no effect. They only ricocheted off her metal frame. She wasn’t even slowed down. The artificial flesh expelled the flattened slugs as it regenerated itself. Within three steps, it looked as though she’d never been shot at all.

Mike backed into the rows of lunch tables, trying to block her path toward him. He held out his hands, as though begging her to stay back.

The pleasure drone’s eyes scanned Mike’s hand and said, “Handplay request registered. Please enjoy my patented state-of-the-art Real Flesh handjob.”

Then the drone smashed her whole arm through the table in front of Mike, breaking it in half. Wood splintered into the air as she repeatedly hacked at the table with her axe-like palm.

With each strike, the drone said, “Please enjoy.”

Mike screamed and fell to his feet. He emptied half his clip into her, even knowing that it wouldn’t have any effect. She continued hacking the chairs and tables as he scurried across the floor.

“Please enjoy. Please enjoy.”

I pulled Mike to his feet. “Run!”

We raced toward the exit. Just before we got out of the room, I looked back to see if the drone was chasing us. She squatted down and then leapt into the air, flying over the tables. Mike let out a deep wail as the machine landed palm-first on his back.

He fell to the floor. The drone crawled on top of him and slammed her hand three times into his chest.

“Please enjoy. Please enjoy. Please enjoy.”

The sound of cracking ribs and tenderizing meat were even louder than Mike’s high-pitched screams. Mike pushed at her torso, trying to get the thing off of him. I pulled on her back, but she wouldn’t budge. She weighed as much as a train car.

As Mike cried out, the drone scanned his O-shaped lips and said, “Mouthplay request registered. Please enjoy my patented state-of-the-art Real Flesh blowjob.”

Then the drone opened her rubbery lips and sucked two of Mike’s fingers into its mouth. The sound of grinding bones and meat issued from her throat, as though Mike’s fingers had been pulled into a blender. When Mike pulled his hand away, only bloody stumps were left of his fingers. Inside the drone’s mouth, her tongue spun in circles. It was surely designed for added stimulation, but the tongue moved so quickly that it would macerate anything that was placed inside of the mouth.

“Get it off of me!” Mike screamed. His voice was weak and wheezy. He probably had a collapsed lung.

I pulled the .64 magnum from my belt and aimed it at the thing’s right eye. When I squeezed the trigger, the force of impact threw the drone’s head back. Her eyeball exploded into chunks of glass and metal. But it did not penetrate her skull or damage the brain. She straightened her neck and looked at me. Then she stood up and stepped away from Mike.

The drone scanned my breasts with her remaining eye. “Female employee detected. Switching to futanari mode.”

Then a flap on her lower abdomen opened and a massive penis emerged, clicking into place above her crotch. Like a gorilla arm of meat and metal, the phallus pointed up at me. Then it spun in a circle like a freakish drill.

I pointed the magnum at her remaining eye and blew it out of the socket. Unable to see me, I stepped out of the way of the drill grinding toward me.

“Come on,” I told Mike, helping him to his feet.

As I dragged him toward the exit, another pleasure drone pushed through the doors, blocking our path. This one had curly blond hair and caked-on blue makeup. Behind her, a dozen other DD-50s followed, piling into the cafeteria. Most of the pleasure drones had Velcro patches on their heads instead of hair. Two were missing arms. One was just a metal skeleton with no artificial flesh on its body, staring at us with its white eyeballs bulging out of its steel face.

In unison, the pleasure drones said, “Good evening, Valued Yellow Level Employee. How may I serve you today?”

We backed away.

“This way,” I said.

We couldn’t go back the way we came. We’d have to find another way out. Mike staggered as quickly as he could with his broken ribs, but I had to drag him alongside me to get him to move fast enough to get away from the drones. The mechanical women spread out across the cafeteria, moving toward us like a horde of the undead. I tried not to interact with them, not wanting to show them my hands or mouth or anything that might communicate a sexual request by accident.

But as we exited the cafeteria, I dropped my magnum onto the concrete floor. Bending down to retrieve it, I heard the electronic sounds of the drones’ eyes scanning my backside.

In unison, the drones said, “Analplay request registered. Please enjoy my patented state-of-the-art Real Flesh ass-ramming.”

Then their lower abdomens snapped open and a dozen monster-sized cocks poked out at in my direction.

“Oh…” I said, slumping my shoulders downward. “Just great…”

I pushed through the exit doors, tugging Mike alongside me, as I heard the sound of penis-shaped drills grinding toward me.

Escape

Out in the hallway, my first thought was to barricade the door, but there wasn’t any furniture nearby and even if there was I wouldn’t know how well the door would hold. Those things were unbelievably strong. Our best bet was to outrun them.

As we raced down the hall, we passed dozens of corpses. Seeing them now, their state made much more sense. There were penis-shaped holes in their chests and skulls, crushed lower abdomens, palm-shaped prints in their ragged clothes. They were all fucked to death by rampaging military-grade sex machines.

“I need to stop,” Mike whined, holding his chest. “I can’t do it.”

He let go of me and fell to the floor. I looked back and saw the pleasure drones marching out of the cafeteria, their cocks drilling the air.

“Come on.” I tugged at Mike’s arm. “We can’t stop.”

The drilling sounds closed in on us.

“I can’t do it,” he said.

I pulled him off the ground. “Get up or I’m leaving your ass.”

When I lifted him, Mike coughed and wheezed. Blood spurted from his mouth and drooled down his chin. He was bleeding internally.

As they closed in, the pleasure drones began humping at the air in our direction, saying, “Please enjoy. Please enjoy. Please enjoy.”

I didn’t know if Mike was going to make it. Looking down at him, I considered dropping him and leaving him for the machines. He was probably going to die anyway and if I let him hold me back any longer I wouldn’t make it myself.

But I couldn’t leave him. I wasn’t that kind of person, at least I didn’t think I was.

“Come on,” I said, pushing us forward.

We passed windows in the hallway. I considered jumping out one of them, but I couldn’t tell exactly where we were in the building. The boat might have been a long swim away, one we wouldn’t be able to survive. There was also a good chance that the splash would attract a group of clusters. I felt it was best to continue forward, unsure how we’d get to safety.

“Elevator…” Mike cried, pointing ahead.

He was right. We were headed straight for a group of elevators. There was also a stairwell, but that wouldn’t be much help to us. The drones would just follow us down the stairs. But an elevator was different. If we could get inside one of them in time, the drones wouldn’t be able to follow. Perhaps we could descend straight to Green Level and get out of there.

“Pick up the pace,” I told him.

We used all our strength to dash to the elevator. When we arrived, I hit the down arrow and Mike hit the floor. He gasped and clutched his chest. I didn’t know how long it would take for the elevator to arrive, but there were four of them so the chances of one of them reaching us in time were pretty good. Until then, I had to figure out a way to hold off the onslaught of humping machines.

I raised the magnum and fired at the drones.

They were unfazed by the shots. They said in unison, “Please enjoy. Please enjoy. Please enjoy.”

The drone with curly blond hair led the pack. She stepped toward me, her drilling phallus leading the way. I fired a shot at her eye, but missed. The bullet grazed the top of her head, cutting a strip through her fuzzy wig. My aim was terrible and the staggering recoil didn’t help. The only way to hit them was if I moved in closer, but I needed to stay near the elevator door if I was going to escape in time.

I held out my hand to Mike and said, “Shotgun.”

Mike dropped it from his shoulder and kicked it over. I snatched it up, pumped it, and fired. One blast to the face blew Blonde’s wig right off, and took most of the fake flesh on her head with it. The thing wouldn’t be able to regenerate that.

Her eyes were damaged, but not enough to blind her. She was still able to target us. The sound of her drill-dong roaring as she closed in.

Before she could reach me, the door on the far elevator pinged.

“It’s here,” Mike yelled.

I stepped back to help him to his feet. But before we could get inside the elevator, something crawled out.

A cluster made of five men hobbled into the hallway. It had five heads with rat-like muzzles and fangs. When it saw us with its three forward-facing heads, it sneered and twitched its whiskers. Then it came forward, lurching toward us on eight muscled legs. I fired the shotgun at it, blowing off the top of one of its heads. It recoiled a little, but that wasn’t enough to kill it. Two more clusters exited the elevator behind it.

We were trapped. Hulking many-headed beasts on one side and a dozen indestructible drones on the other. I looked at the door to the stairwell, but it was already too late to take that route. The blond drone blocked our path to it.

“Ah, fuck…” I said, pumping the shotgun and taking aim.

But I didn’t fire. I just stood there, contemplating whether it wouldn’t be better to just blow my own head off rather than endure the gruesome death that likely awaited me. As I stood there like an idiot, the shotgun rattling in my shaky hands, the clusters and drones closed in on us like a boa constrictor squeezing tightly around its victim’s throat.

Before the blond drone could drill a fist-sized hole through me, a massive figure plowed through the stairwell door. It barreled into the blond drone and shoved it through the hallway window.

All I heard was “Please enjoy” as the drone fell into the black soup below.

When the figure turned back to look at me, I couldn’t believe who it was. A smile formed on his malformed face.

“Gary?” I asked.

He looked a little different with his skin all burned up from swimming in corrosive bonding fluid, but it was definitely him.

“This way,” he said.

He grabbed Mike and took us into the stairway. As the door closed behind us, I saw the drones turn their attention toward the clusters. They attacked each other, tearing into each other’s flesh. I was sure they’d be at it for a while. Neither the drones nor the clusters were easy to kill.

Gary led us up the stairs to the executive floor. The door read Platinum Level, and it wasn’t just any door. It was reinforced steel. The door seemed specifically designed to hold off renegade robot attacks.

A soldier opened the door as we approached and said, “Get in.”

Once we were inside, the soldier closed it behind us. Then we were able to take a breath of relief. I dropped the weapons I’d been lugging around, my hands still shaking. We were in an executive lounge. The place didn’t look old or rundown at all. Not much dust or corrosion, looking just like it did forty years ago. The doors must have been sealed airtight to keep the place in such a preserved condition.

As Gary placed Mike on a couch, I went to him and said, “How the hell are you still alive? Where have you been?”

Gary chuckled in his crooked double-voice.

“Nice to meet you too, Stork,” he said.

I realized he had not seen me in my new body yet. “Wait… How did you know who I was?”

“I recognized you immediately. You look exactly like a cross between Hydra and Pixie.”

For some reason, I found myself offended by his comment. “What do you mean exactly? I’ve become a freak.” I pointed at my big alien eyes with my overly long white finger. Then I realized I shouldn’t have used the term freak in his presence. “No offense.”

He smiled at me. “Well, I think you look absolutely beautiful in your new form.”

His comment made me laugh. “Yeah? Well, I kind of like it myself…” I stretched out my long arms and legs. “I’m more agile now. Flexible.”

He nodded at me. Then pointed at the soldier standing behind us. The man glared at me as I stretched my freakish limbs in his direction.

“This is Lieutenant North,” Gary said. “He’s the reason I’m still alive.”

I turned to him and held out my hand to shake. He didn’t take it. The man had a stern look on his face. The blackness around his eyes suggested he hadn’t had a wink of sleep in days. He was obviously worn out and high strung.

“Did you come across any of my men while you were down there?” he asked me. “I sent a recon team down there two hours ago and haven’t heard from them.”

I knew exactly who he was referring to. He didn’t look like he was good at taking bad news, but I decided not to lie to him.

“We found four dead soldiers on the way here,” I said. “Three bodies in Research and Development. The fourth we heard calling for help, but he was dead by the time we got to him. How many of them were there?”

He looked down, fuming. Disappointment burned in his eyes.

“Four…” he muttered in response. Then he stepped away from me, no longer interested in speaking.

Gary turned back to Mike, investigating his wound. The injured man was having a hard time breathing.

“So you’ve been here this whole time?” I asked.

Gary nodded. “I tried to go for help but didn’t make it far. I saw a broken window in this place, so I came in for a rest. That’s when I came across North and his men. They saved me from the automatons on Red Level.”

I realized Gary was likely the thing that created the trail of sludge we were following from downstairs. It wasn’t a cluster at all. He must have entered through the broken windows on the half-submerged floor below Green Level.

“There’s more of those things downstairs?” I asked.

“A whole factory full of them. Based on the information we gathered, the machines here began murdering their makers. The higher ups didn’t bother trying to save anyone. They locked the place down and left everyone at the mercy of the automatons. Blamed everything on a radiation leak. Nobody ever returned to clean the place up. Too scared, I guess. Or perhaps they were afraid of what would happen to them if the truth was exposed that they stole military technology and were reproducing it illegally.”

I laughed, realizing that I was still hoping to hear from the corporate head office on Pam’s computer downstairs. That email surely just bounced back. The bosses buried this place in the Wire District wasteland, where nobody would ever hear of it again. Of course, if they did get the email they would surely shit their pants in knowing that somebody finally entered their sealed-off factory. If they were still alive after all these years, that is.

Gary sighed as he examined Mike’s wounds.

“How is he?” I asked.

He looked at me but didn’t respond. Obviously, he didn’t want to give me an answer in front of Mike. It didn’t look good.

“So it’s just you and the Lieutenant now?” I asked, changing the subject to make it easy for him.

“Yeah. The two of us.” Then he thought about it for a second. “And the prisoner.”

“Prisoner?”

He nodded. “We caught him.”

Gary led me into one of the executive offices and showed me the prisoner he spoke of. It was Porn Eyes, his wrists and ankles tied together with wire. The man didn’t look anything like he did when I saw him as Jupiter. He was half-melted. His bones showing through his skin. His face a shiny skull. But his eyes were still the same. His eyes were still scarred with the same pornographic images.

The killer stared up at me, then looked away.

“How did you get him?” I asked.

“He followed me here.” Gary stepped into the room and squeezed into a chair across from him. “This man is something else. Even after all of this, he wouldn’t give up on his job. I almost have to respect his professionalism. If I ever wanted somebody dead I would surely hire the man.”

I stood over the killer, staring down at him. Then I kicked him in his stomach.

“That’s for Sicily.”

The killer didn’t give me the satisfaction of cringing at the pain. He just took it. Or perhaps his nerves were fried and he couldn’t feel anything anymore. I’d have to kick him for the other people he killed later on, but at that moment I wanted answers. The Jupiter side of me wanted to know why I’d been driven into this nightmare of a situation.

“So, why’d you do it?” I asked. “Why’d you kill the governor?”

The killer just stared at me.

I continued, “Yeah, you were paid to kill him. But why? Did you kill his daughter as well?”

The killer just stared at me.

“Don’t bother,” Gary said. “He won’t talk. He hasn’t said a word since we caught him. I think his tongue must have melted out.”

The killer just stared at me. I stared right back at him.

Gary got up and we turned to leave. But before we left the room, the killer spoke.

“Thhiissss…” he said in a hissy voice.

We paused and returned to him.

“What?” I asked.

He opened his skeletal jaw and repeated himself. “This.” Then he looked out of the window at the ocean of black sludge.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He spoke slow in his hissing voice so that we could understand him. “The Governor wanted to fix the Wire. Wanted to come in, close down the plants that were too hazardous, regulate the rest. But there’s a lot of money in this district. A lot of secrets wanting to stay buried.”

His skeletal face seemed to smile at me, but I couldn’t tell without his lips.

He said, “It would have been the biggest payday of my career.”

“But the governor was right to fix this place.” I pointed at the toxic sludge outside. “Look at what happened.”

Porn Eyes shook his head. “Nothing he could have done would have prevented this. He was twenty years too late.”

The killer was probably right, but it was still a shame. We finally had a politician willing to do something about the Wire District and he was killed for it. As Jupiter, I thought of the governor as just another asshole who thought I wasn’t good enough to melt with his daughter. But now that I think about it, perhaps he refused to allow me to join with her for my own safety. Perhaps he knew his daughter could be targeted by his actions and he didn’t want to put anyone else at risk. If his daughter died she would have killed all the people she bonded with.

As though he was reading my mind, Porn Eyes said, “I didn’t kill the governor’s daughter.”

I was taken aback. “What?”

“It wasn’t me who got the daughter killed. Some amateurs were hired to kidnap her in order to blackmail the governor. It went wrong. She was killed trying to escape. So I was called in. Plan B. Those who wanted the governor dead knew I wouldn’t fail them. But I never thought there’d be a witness.” He paused, gulping down a thick strand of black snot. “Because of you, I had a blemish on my reputation. You can’t believe how embarrassed it made me.”

“So it wasn’t just because I was a witness?” I asked. “You were embarrassed because a witness got away? Is that why you killed so many people to get to me?”

“I got…” he looked down. “Carried away.”

“You sound almost apologetic,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s because you’re so close to death or because you know you’re at my mercy.”

Porn Eyes snickered in a hacking, gurgling way.

Then he said, “We’re all about to die. I’m at the mercy of no one.”

“We’ll get out of here. I’m getting out of here.”

He snickered again. “Think you can get out before the bombs fall?”

“What bombs?” I looked up at Gary. He shrugged back at me.

“Ask your Lieutenant North,” he said. “I overheard him speaking to his men. They plan to level the entire Wire District from the air. Nothing will survive. Not you, not me, not anything.”

I don’t know why, but the second he said that I was compelled to kick him in his horrendous skull-shaped face. He saw it coming, but with his hands tied there was nothing he could do to stop it.

We left the room and went to find the Lieutenant. He was all alone in the bathroom, using a toilet as a stool. His mission was a failure. All his men were dead. The man was depressed.

“What’s this about bombs being dropped on the Wire?” I asked him, not even slightly delicate with his emotional state.

The Lieutenant didn’t bother denying it. He took his face out of the palm of his hand and said, “That was the plan. If we failed our mission.”

“When is this supposed to happen?” I asked.

North looked up at me. “Two days ago.”

Gary and I looked at each other. We were both confused.

“What do you mean?”

The Lieutenant sighed. “They were supposed to wipe this place off the face of the Earth, taking us and those creatures outside with it. But it never happened.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” He pulled out his radio. “I haven’t been able to reach anyone for over fifty hours. Last I heard, they were going through with the plan. They apologized. Told me my men and I were true patriots and how our sacrifices were a credit to our unit and bla bla bla. Then silence. Nothing. The bombs never fell. I have no idea why. Maybe they decided against it and have a new plan. Maybe they just postponed the drop and it could happen at any second. I’m as in the dark as you are.”

I looked at Gary. “We need to get out of here.”

North stood off of the toilet and interjected, “There’s no way out.” He stepped across the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror, touching the dark circles under his eyes. “Even if we could escape the drones, there’s no way across the deluge. Our only chance is to wait for help to arrive. And I got news for you. Help ain’t comin’.”

“I’ve got a boat,” I said.

Their eyes lit up and both men looked at me. Suddenly their demeanor changed.

“What did you say?” North asked. “You have a what?”

“A boat,” I repeated. “How else do you think we got here?”

“So you got the boat off of the roof, did you?” He scratched his four-day beard. “Well, we could try it. But we probably won’t get far. Those things are attracted to the sound of the engines.”

I shook my head. “It’s not exactly the boat from the roof. This was… handmade. It’s a pedal boat. No engine. We were able to get across the lake without alerting any of the creatures.”

A smile spread across the soldier’s face. “Well, hot damn.” He looked at Gary. “Maybe we can do this. Where is it?”

“Tied up outside of Green Level,” I said. “Is there another way down there?”

Gary said, “We could take the elevator.”

“How’s the situation on Green Level?” North asked me. “Any hostiles?”

I shook my head. “It was clear last time I was there. I didn’t run into any drones until I got to Yellow Level.”

North went for the door. “Then we should move out.”

Gary said, “We only have an hour or two of daylight. Maybe we should wait until morning.”

“No, we go now.” North turned back from the doorway. “If they are still planning to bomb this place we can’t afford to stay here another minute.”

Mike didn’t look good. Not good at all. When Gary and I stepped out into the lobby, we couldn’t believe how drastically his condition had worsened since we left the room. His flesh was pale from loss of blood. His chest sunken on the right side, dark purple bruises forming across his ribcage. His breathing was slow and gasping. As his wounds swelled, it only made breathing more difficult. The guy needed a doctor, but none of us had much medical knowledge. We had to get him to a hospital immediately.

“He’s not going to make it,” Gary whispered to me.

But I wasn’t going to give up on him. I went through too much getting him there.

“Come on,” I told Mike, holding out my hand to him. “We’re leaving. Now.”

Mike wheezed, his breaths raspy and whistling. He shook his head at me.

North came into the lobby with his supplies, ready to head out.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“We need a minute,” I said.

“We don’t have a minute.”

I grabbed Mike by the arm and tried pulling him to his feet, but the movement caused the injured man to seize up. He cried out, grasping his chest, and fell back to the couch. I tried again, but each time only seemed to injure him more.

“We need a stretcher,” I said.

North shook his head. “We don’t have time to make a stretcher. That man is already dead. Leave him.”

I looked at Gary. “Can you carry him?”

Gary nodded. “Not delicately, but I can move him. I might do more damage.”

I nodded. “It’s better than leaving him.” I looked at North. “What about Porn Eyes?”

“Porn Eyes?” North asked.

“The prisoner.”

“The man is a psychopath,” North said. “We can’t risk bringing him.”

“We can’t just leave him to die,” Gary said.

“Did you see the look of him? He’s half-dead already.”

I agreed with North, but if we were going to get Mike out of there we needed extra man-power to pick up the slack for carrying the injured man.

“If he can pedal we could use him,” I said.

North spit on the floor at us and went to get Porn Eyes. When he brought him back, Gary lifted Mike off the couch, cradling in his multiple pairs of arms. Mike bawled and whimpered as the large man held him, his rib bones snapping in and out of place. Then we left.

We took the elevator down to Green Level. As we rode the elevator, I watched Porn Eyes carefully. His wrists were tied behind his back, but his legs were free. I wondered if he was still going to try to kill us. When he thought we were all going to die, he’d lost interest in completing his job. But once he realized he could possibly get through this alive, perhaps he’d revert back to his original plan. Even in his current condition, he could survive if he melted with somebody. Whatever the case, the prisoner was behaving himself.

I looked over at him. “Before I killed him, the bartender at Old McBarebottom’s mentioned a name: Mr. Norman. Is that you?”

The killer nodded his head.

He said, “I prefer the name Vic.”

I looked away. “Okay, Vic, here’s the deal. You’re alive for one reason and one reason only: to help pedal our boat. You touch a weapon, try to run, or even look at me in a way that makes me nervous, you’re dead. No warning. No second chance. You’re dead. You got me?”

I heard a noise squirt from his mouth. I think it was a laugh, like he found my words amusing.

“Fair deal,” he said.

Then he stayed quiet. I doubted he was afraid of me. Causing fear wasn’t why I said what I said. I just wanted him to know that I wasn’t weak. I wanted him to know he would survive longer doing what I said than killing us and going off on his own. We had to work together if we wanted to stay alive.

Even though he was a psychopath who wanted me dead, I felt I could trust him more than I could North. I’d only known the soldier for a few minutes, and was already suspicious of him. He seemed unstable, like he could lose his shit at any minute. Vic, on the other hand, was in control. He could endure anything. Even in his half-melted state, I felt like he was somebody you’d want at your side during a fight. Both seemed like trouble compared to Gary and Mike, but at least I knew one of them could shoot.

Mike no longer cried out. He just stared at the elevator ceiling. It didn’t seem like he could feel the pain anymore. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Hang in there,” I told him, patting him on the arm.

When we got to Green Level, I led the way. There was no sign of clusters or drones. It was just as dead as we left it. I pointed to the window where the boat was tied up and North went straight for it, leading Porn Eyes to the exit. While they loaded Mike and the equipment onto the boat, I decided to check on something. Just out of curiosity, I stepped into the HR offices and went to Pam’s desk.

Leaning down and scanning the email box, I couldn’t believe what I saw. A new message, dated today. I clicked on it.

The message read:

TO: WendigJPamela

FROM: TannerSNicholas

SUBJECT: RE: URGENT

Dear Valued Survivors of the Wire District,

I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience my company’s products might have caused you. We here at SEXBORG, INC have a mission to manufacture the most technologically sophisticated pleasure drones on the market, utilizing our patented state-of-the-art Real Flesh pleasure technology. It was never our intention to unleash a small army of indestructible death machines on you or your fellow survivors. Please accept this voucher for a fifty percent discount off your next purchase from SEXPLAY MARKETPLACE as a token of our apology.

After perusing your request for assistance, we have come to the unfortunate conclusion that aid from SEXBORG, INC is completely unfeasible at this time. We hope this doesn’t discourage your future business with our company.

Thank you for choosing SEXBORG, INC as your preferred pleasure drone supplier.

Good luck out there,

Nick Tanner, CEO

I wasn’t sure what was more surprising: that there was actually a response to my message or that the company still existed after all those years. Part of me wondered if Nick Tanner wasn’t a real person at all but some kind of AI computer program that was capable of creating automatic responses to any type of question. Another part of me wondered if somebody was just fucking with us.

After finishing the email, the nearby printer spewed out a small piece of paper with the voucher from SEXPLAY MARKETPLACE. I left it in its tray.

When I returned to the others, they just finished loading Mike onto the boat. Once Gary climbed down, I untied the rope from the desk and hopped down onto the makeshift roof.

“What the hell kind of boat is this anyway?” he asked me as we got into the pedal seats.

I took hold of the steering wheel. “Long story.”

With Porn Eyes to my left, North behind him, Gary sitting behind me, and Mike lying on the floor between the front seats and the glassless windshield, we pedaled away from the building.

But before we could get away, we were spotted. Up above, from a row of windows on Yellow Level, the army of pleasure drones Mike and I had escaped from caught sight of us inside the boat. They glared down at us with black-stained plastic eyes.

They called down to us. “Please enjoy. Please enjoy. Please enjoy. Please enjoy.”

Then they crashed through the windows and dove into the soup, calling out to us as they fell.

“Hurry,” I said. “Pedal faster.”

We used all of our leg muscles to pedal the ship away from the factory. I looked back. The drones sank to the bottom of the fluid, but I could tell they were still headed toward us.

“It’s okay, they can’t swim,” North said.

I shook my head. “It’s not the drones I’m worried about. It’s what they’re going to attract.”

Just as I finished my statement, the fluid behind us exploded with movement and emerging tentacle-like shapes. Beneath the sludge, the drones were attracting all of the largest clusters into the area with their electronic voices and jerky movements.

We pedaled as fast as we could, holding on as the clusters thrashed in the water, bouncing our ship against waves of ink. The creatures weren’t after us, but that didn’t mean we were safe from their onslaught. We held on tight, pedaling for our lives, knowing at any second we could be capsized by the frenzied behemoths below.

Black Sea

We got far enough away from the clusters to feel a little safer, but the creatures were still back there, following us. Because the pleasure drones were so difficult to kill, it was unlikely the clusters were able to destroy them. The drones continued after us, drawing more and more creatures with them.

After two miles, the situation didn’t change, but our legs were tiring. We were slowing down.

“We’re never going to lose them,” I said.

Gary placed one of his large palms on my back to calm me. “Just keep pedaling. We’ll make it.”

Despite the burning in my muscles and joints, I kept pushing myself to pedal the boat. But twenty minutes later, my legs gave out and I just stopped. I couldn’t do it anymore.

When Gary saw me, he tried pedaling harder to make up for me. But Vic, with his skeletal legs, wasn’t able to continue either. And although North chastised us for quitting, it was obvious he wasn’t able to take it for much longer himself.

“We have to take turns,” Gary said. “One of you rest for ten minutes, while the other two pedal. Then another takes a rest. We won’t go as fast, but we’ll last longer.”

“What about you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll manage.”

I took the first rest. Because he was a murderer and our prisoner, Porn Eyes would take the last break, despite being in the worst shape of us.

While resting my legs, I went to Mike. He was curled there, staring out at the black fluid with distant eyes. I gave him some water, rubbed the bloody drool from his chin.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

He sighed. I could tell he wasn’t expecting to make it, even after all we’d done to get him out of there. He was just waiting for it all to end.

“I’m going to die alone,” Mike said in a soft voice.

“No, you’re not. You’re not dying. We’ll get you to a hospital. And even if you don’t make it, you’re not going to die alone. I’m here with you.”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”

Then he paused to look out the window. His eyes trembled. It was almost like he was holding back a tear, but he didn’t cry. He just stared into the distance.

“I was going to ask you a favor,” he continued. “I wanted you to send a message to my loved ones. But no matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t think of any.”

“You couldn’t think of a message?”

“No, I couldn’t think of any loved ones. Of all the people I know, I don’t have anyone I can call a loved one. I never realized that until now.”

I looked at Mike lying there on the floor of the patchwork boat. He was such a stubborn, selfish idiot when I first met him. But at that moment, he was a grubby, pathetic wretch of a man. I don’t think I’d ever pitied a person more than him right there.

“You have no family?” I asked him.

“Not really.” He shrugged at me. “My parents weren’t anything special, so nobody wanted to join with them when they got old. Cancer got my mom. Heart disease got my dad. I had some brothers, but they all joined with other people a long time ago. They didn’t really care for me pre-joining, so they really had no interest keeping in touch with me after that. I don’t blame them, though. I treated them like shit when we were kids.”

“You surely have friends at least.”

“I have people I drink with. People I watch the game with. But they don’t give a shit about me. I could die and they wouldn’t even notice.”

I didn’t know what to say other than, “I’m sorry…”

“The only person I could think of was my ex. I was about to ask you if you might be willing to go find her someday, after you made it to safety. Tell her I was sorry for the way I treated her. Tell her how much I really loved her. Tell her how I died thinking about her. But you know what? Fuck that. I hated that bitch. If I really wanted you to give her a message from me I’d want you to tell her to go fuck herself.”

I laughed. I wasn’t sure it was supposed to be a joke, but I laughed at his comment anyway. He opened his mouth to laugh with me, but only a cough came out.

He spit blood from his dried lips, then he continued, “I deserve to die alone. I didn’t give a shit about anyone else but myself all my life, so there’s no reason to expect anybody else to give a shit about me. And you know what? I’m fine with that. I was an asshole, but I liked who I was. I’d rather be myself—an unapologetic self-centered son-of-a-bitch—and be hated by everyone, than have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t just so that people would care whether I lived or died.”

The way he spoke about himself in the past tense worried me. He’d already given up on making it out of there. I wasn’t sure how much longer he’d last. I let him keep talking.

“The world needs assholes, too. You might not like us. You might avoid us like shit on the sidewalk. But at the end of the day, you need us in your lives. You need us so that you can feel better about yourself for all the shitty things you do to other people, because you know that what we do is so much worse. You need us so that you can pretend that you’re one of the good ones. You need us because we’re the ones that bring the rest of you together.” Then he closed his eyes and took a deep raspy breath through his one functional lung. “Without assholes, the world would be a horrible place to live. Because the only thing worse than dealing with a son-of-a-bitch like me, is looking in the mirror and seeing one staring back at you.”

He didn’t speak after that. His breaths slowed. He lay there, waiting for death to take him. It would’ve been easier for us if he was gone. We wouldn’t have had to carry his weight. We wouldn’t have had to give him our water or tend to his wounds. We wouldn’t have had to carry him to a hospital or feel guilty if we had to leave him behind at some point. But just like an asshole, Mike didn’t die.

We pedaled the boat for hours through the Wire District, passing building after dilapidated building. We considered stopping for a rest, but thought it best to keep going. If the pleasure drones caught up to us we wouldn’t be able to fight them off.

Night fell and the clusters came out. Their shrieking and chirping noises filled the air. Masses of flesh crawled the factory walls around us, but they mostly left us alone. Every once in a while, one of them would swim up to us and pump against the bottom of the ship. We’d stop pedaling and remained calm, waiting until they lost interest and swam away. Only one attempted climbing onto the ship, but after cutting itself open on one of the outer spikes it jumped back into the water and never came back.

A poison gas cloud came in at one point and we had to wear our gas masks. I pulled the hood of the hazmat suit over Mike’s face and he coughed blood into it, blocking his sight. The gas scared all of the clusters underwater so we had a good hour of pedaling the boat without coming across any of them. Although it was safer in the gas cloud, it was difficult to navigate where we were going. We could only see about five feet in front of us.

We seemed to be going on forever, but there was no sign of the deluge ever ending. The depth of the sludge seemed to stay level. I thought we would’ve been out of it by then. But the sea of ink continued no matter how far we traveled.

“We should be out of it soon,” North said.

But we didn’t believe it anymore than he did.

“I don’t hear or see anything,” I said, looking out of the window at the smoggy black sky. “No helicopters. No planes. No lights in the distance. There should be something up ahead, shouldn’t there?”

“We should be out of it soon,” North repeated.

We continued pedaling in silence.

As dawn broke and the atmosphere cleared of toxic smog, we realized we were no longer in the Wire District. We’d made it into the city. Despite our hopes of escaping the deluge, there was no end to it. An ocean of black ink stretched as far as we could see. I couldn’t believe it. The flood wasn’t contained to one side of the city. What had been happening to us for the past week was now happening everywhere.

We traveled through the streets, passing deserted apartment buildings and the tips of dead street lights. Clusters watched us from rooftops, crawling in and out of broken windows.

I just shook my head in disbelief. “What happened? Where is everyone?”

But they were as shocked and clueless as I was. Even Porn Eyes was clearly stunned, despite the limited range of expressions he could make with his black skinless skull-like face. It was his turn to take a break from pedaling. He used it to keep watch, standing at the back of the boat, his eyes locked on the sludge to make sure we weren’t being followed by drones or the clusters they’d attract. There’d been no sign of them for hours, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

“It wasn’t like this before,” North said. “This must have happened recently. There was a blockade separating the city from the flood. A hundred men securing the area. All of that must be underwater now.”

“How is this possible?” I asked. “How could one little bond hotel produce this much waste?”

We looked back. The hotel we’d come from was miles away. It couldn’t possibly have been responsible for this.

Gary said, “Maybe it wasn’t just our bond hotel that had a spill. Maybe it was all of them.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. It was a scary thought, but would explain why the entire city was in the same state as the Wire District. But it still didn’t seem plausible. Our hotel was abandoned. It wasn’t maintained. It made sense that it would have a spill. But all of them? Even the upscale ones that were strictly regulated to ensure the lowest possible probability of mutation? It seemed impossible.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

It was the question on all of our minds. I looked at North but he didn’t say anything.

“Is there anyone you can contact? Your superiors?”

He shook his head. “Nobody’s going to come for us. We’re up shit creek. Literally.”

We were all dispirited by this new turn of events, but North seemed to take it the worst of us. He must have expected without a doubt to be safe by that point. He must have put all of his attention and willpower on getting out of the Wire, only to have his expectations utterly crushed once we finally made it out and discovered our situation was even worse than we’d thought it was. He looked fatigued. The man hadn’t slept in days. I didn’t know if he had the mental fortitude to go on.

“We have to assume we’re on our own,” Vic said. He stepped forward and sat down in the seat next to me, ready to pedal again. “We keep moving and do whatever we can to survive.”

It was the first time we’d heard from him in a while. He hadn’t said much the entire trip, just pedaling when we needed him to and resting when it was his turn. His flesh was all scab. He was surely in constant pain. Even speaking looked excruciating, his skinless jaws cracking open charred wounds with every word.

“Our chances of making it out of the city are slim at best,” North said. “We barely made it out of the Wire alive. It took us all night. And we only made it due to dumb luck. But the distance we’d have to travel to get out of the city is fifty times that of the Wire District. It would take weeks to pedal out of this place.”

I looked over at Gary. He continued pedaling even when the rest of us had given up. There was nothing that was going to stop him from trying. And Porn Eyes looked determined to survive. Even in his horrific state, he would make it on sheer willpower alone.

“What choice do we have?” I asked North.

Then I went back to pedaling, matching Gary’s speed. Porn Eyes joined us. When I looked at North, nodding at him for confirmation that we would make it, the soldier just shook his head at us. He got up from his seat and grabbed one of the cans of tomato soup from the back. Then he opened it, eating the red condensed goo with his fingers. Every bite he took was mixed with angry grumbling and spitting noises, as though he had nobody else to take out his frustration on but the contents of a can of decades-old soup.

I looked down at Mike. He was still breathing, but he hadn’t moved in at least an hour. If the city wasn’t flooded we could have gotten him to a hospital. He would’ve survived. But now, there was no help coming. I doubted that any hospitals still existed. Before, I thought for sure the man would make it. Now that it was going to take days or weeks to escape the flood, I didn’t know if it was possible. He didn’t have much time left.

A collection of hairless misshapen human heads poked out of the ink in our path. They didn’t come after us or move in our direction. They just floated, watching us silently. As we passed the floating heads, their distorted eyes blinked at us in unison, like they all belonged to the same cluster. They were like a flock of crocodile eyes peeking out of swamp water. They only submerged once we were gone.

“Do you think there are any survivors?” I asked, scanning the deserted apartment buildings on our right.

Gary said from behind me, speaking over my shoulder, “Most of the town was likely evacuated, but there were surely people who got left behind.”

“I’d say the vast majority of them didn’t survive the first night, though,” Vic said.

I said, “We should head toward downtown. That’s where we’re most likely to find other survivors.”

“The suburbs are closer,” Gary said. “We should try there first.”

I shook my head. “The suburbs are probably completely submerged under this stuff. We’re better off heading toward the taller buildings downtown. That’s where everyone else would have gone.”

Gary agreed. “They might even still be evacuating people from downtown.”

I looked down at Mike. His breaths were steady, but his body shivered from lack of blood. His internal bleeding resulted in quite a bit of blood loss, but it must not have been as serious as I’d originally thought. He must not have ruptured any major blood vessels or he wouldn’t have lasted this long.

“Our best bet is to head for the central hospital,” I said. “If they’re still evacuating people that’s the most likely place they’ll be. And there might still be doctors who could help Mike.”

The others agreed, but I was the only person among them who seemed interested in making decisions for Mike’s sake. I was the only one who felt he might possibly have a chance. Even Gary didn’t seem very optimistic about his chances.

“How far away is the hospital?” North asked.

I looked into the murky waters, trying to make out any of the street signs down below. But I couldn’t see even an inch into the fluid.

I wasn’t sure we’d be able to find our way with the city in its current state. Even before the flood, it was difficult getting anywhere without a GPS system. It was going to be next to impossible to guess our way downtown.

Despite being unsure how far away it was by pedal boat, I decided to give them an answer anyway.

“We’ll get there before sundown,” I said.

But I was very likely talking out of my ass.

If there were any survivors in the buildings we passed, we didn’t see them. We didn’t call out or make much noise, so it was possible if there were people alive in the nearby apartments they were just unaware of us. They’d most likely be hiding or barricaded somewhere deep inside the buildings.

The first survivor we saw was riding a jet ski through the streets. We didn’t get a good look at him. We heard the engine roaring and then saw a man in a full wetsuit, bags strapped to his back, a motorcycle helmet on his head, riding the jet ski at top speed. He didn’t notice us. A horde of clusters raced through the sludge after him.

I wondered how long the man had lived. Had he been traveling through the deluge all day or had he only just recently attempted to use the jet ski? Was he surviving alone or was there a group of survivors he left behind? We’d never know for sure.

When we arrived at the intersection where we’d seen him, we scanned the street in the direction he’d gone. He was far down the road. The clusters that had been chasing him had been left in his dust.

“Do you think he’s going to make it?” I asked.

Just when I said that, a behemoth tentacle of fused together bodies exploded from the sludge and threw the jet ski into the air. It wrapped itself around the machine and its driver, crushing them in its vice-like grip. It was too far away to hear his screams.

“Not a chance,” Vic said.

Then the creature descended back into the soup with the thrashing driver in its grip.

Shelter

We did not make it to the hospital before nightfall, but nobody blamed me for the mistake. They all looked too tired to get upset about it.

“We need to rest,” Gary said, as the sun was beginning to set.

I agreed.

There was a lighted window a few floors up in an apartment building ahead of us. Candlelight flickered at us between pieces of metal that were melded together to form some kind of barrier. It was obviously built by somebody who’d been left behind. Another survivor.

I pointed it out to the others. “What about there?”

Gary squinted up at the window.

Then he nodded. “Maybe there’s somebody up there.”

We had to set up camp in one of the nearby apartment buildings before the clusters came out, and this place was as good as anywhere. The hospital would have to wait until morning.

I steered us up to the side of the apartment building and parked us as close to a window as I could. The glass was shattered, covered in oily goo. Clusters had used this place as an entry point into the apartment building. It wasn’t going to be safe, but since the barricaded apartment was a few floors up we couldn’t access it from the outside. We had to go through there and find the stairs.

North climbed in first. He tied the boat to the radiator. I came in after him.

“We should check the place out first,” I said.

North nodded at me. We each took an automatic rifle, both with sound suppressors and extra ammo, and left the others with the boat.

The interior of the apartment was covered in black bonding fluid. Dozens of clusters must have tracked it into the place. The furniture was covered in it, melted into mounds of mush in the corners of the room. We avoided the largest puddles as we stepped through.

I said, “Keep an eye out. There’s bound to be more in here.”

North let me lead the way. For a military leader, he wasn’t much for leading. Surely he was a Compound Soldier with hundreds of years of military experience, but he didn’t seem brave enough to be in command of anyone. Perhaps being a combination of so many officers wasn’t always a good thing. All the horrific things he’d seen in his past lives did more bad than good, turning him into a coward. It was likely why he still lived while all of his men were dead. He ordered them to do the things he wasn’t brave enough to do himself, sending them to their deaths to protect his own hide.

“Quiet…” I whispered.

There were crunchy squealing sounds coming from one of the bedrooms. Something was in there. I pointed my rifle inside, pointed at a black blob shifting around on top of a bed. There were two of them. One on top of another, squirming against each other with insect legs and human arms.

“What the…” North said.

The creatures were breeding, making love to each other on the half-melted bed. Human tongues from three different orifices licked at a collection of six breasts growing from the center of what appeared to be a female creature. They made love to each other, awkwardly penetrating each other with their misshapen organs. I realized that it wasn’t actually a female and a male cluster. They both had male and female organs, inserting multiple phallus-like organs into vagina-like holes on their bodies. The things moaned and squeaked at us. The bed bouncing up and down.

I raised my rifle and popped off a few shots. The blob let out a quick shriek and then fell silent, dropping to the floor. Part of me thought it was a little cruel to kill the things while they were in the middle of fornicating, but I couldn’t leave them alive in the same apartment we’d docked our ship. I didn’t know how hungry they’d be after mating.

“Those things can breed?” North asked, staring at the sweaty mutant bodies.

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

North snorted. “Terrifying to think what their babies would be like.”

“I never thought of them as a new species,” I said, examining their corpses. “But if these creatures are able to breed, then I’d hate to think of what the future will be like.”

“A new species?” North looked away. “Just great. Damned leftwing nutjobs will probably try to protect them now.”

Then he left the room.

Outside of the apartment, the floor disappeared. There was only two feet of hallway before it dropped off into a crater of black sludge. The interior apartments had all been torn down. Light from the twilit sky shined down from a roofless ceiling. The whole center of the building was gone.

“What the fuck happened here?” North asked.

I looked down at the lake of sludge below us. It was moving slightly, rolling like a whirlpool. A large collection of clusters must have been swimming below the surface.

“Something big came through here. One of the behemoths.” I pointed up. “It must have broken in through a lower floor, tunneled through the building and exited out through the roof.”

North’s face was white as a ghost. “They can do that?”

“The big ones can topple whole buildings.”

North shook his head. “Then nowhere’s safe.”

I nodded but didn’t want to dwell on it. Those things could completely destroy us any time they wanted, but it wasn’t worth worrying about that. There weren’t many of the big ones. Chances of another thing tunneling through this building again were pretty slim. I was more worried about whether or not this place would stay standing in its current condition. I was also worried there wasn’t going to be any way to get up to the apartment we were looking for.

“Let’s find some stairs,” I told North, scanning the small length of hallway we could traverse.

He nodded his head.

“Over here,” I said, pointing at what looked like the remains of the stairwell.

North followed me along the outside of the pit, not realizing he was poking me in the back with the barrel of his rifle every step he took. He was too focused on the pit to realize where his gun was at. He wouldn’t take his eyes off of the wreckage or the shifting murk below.

The steps felt like they were going to crumble under our feet as we climbed the destroyed stairwell. Half the wall and much of the steps had been crushed by the behemoth that burrowed through the building, but sections had been repaired by someone. Boards, ladders and steel beams connected the areas that were missing.

“Somebody’s definitely been surviving here,” I said, looking up at the construction job. Whoever did this knew a little about fixing things.

It wasn’t an easy climb, but we were able to get up three floors safely enough. The apartment was easy to find, being the only door that wasn’t broken off of its hinges. There were scratches and dents on the outside of the door, but it was still intact. Nothing was able to get through.

We knocked quietly, but nobody answered.

“Hello?” I asked in as quiet a voice I could, just loud enough to be heard through the door. “Is somebody there?”

My voice was inhuman and creepy. I could imagine nobody wanting to open the door for me. North tried calling out for the person, but there was still no answer.

When we tried the door, it was locked. The other side was surely barricaded. If the clusters weren’t able to get it open, we knew we wouldn’t be able to. So we looked for another way in.

There was an entrance in the apartment next door. A small hole big enough for a small person, but not big enough for a cluster of threatening size. It must have been the owner’s emergency exit. The crawlspace was too small for North, but I was able to crawl through. Although I was tall, my body was thin around the middle. I was able to worm my way through without too much effort.

On the other side, there was a cage-like door that I was able to unlatch and crawl through. There wasn’t anyone there that I could see. A bunch of smashed up furniture to use for barricades, empty cans of food, some blankets and pillows by the barred window.

North handed me my rifle through the hole.

I looked back at him. “Get the others and meet me at the front door.”

His face turned white again. He didn’t want to go back on his own. But before he could object, I turned and backed away from the exit.

“Hello?” I called out.

There still wasn’t an answer.

I explored the apartment, moving cautiously, keeping my finger on the trigger. I didn’t know if there would be clusters hiding within or crazed survivors ready to protect themselves from intruders.

The place was small. One bedroom. A living room. Kitchen. Bathroom. The kitchen was empty. Most of the cupboards had been removed. Even the stove and refrigerator had been dismantled for parts.

A dozen candles illuminated the room. Many of them were birthday candles on their last few minutes of wick. They must have been lit recently. Somebody had to have still been there.

I found the owner of the apartment in the bedroom. A short, muscled, working class man, of Filipino descent I would guess. He lay on the mattress in his boxer shorts, his back propped against the headboard. His torso covered in grime and self-stitched wounds. His wrists were cut, blood oozing down his lap, staining the white bed sheets beneath him. A razor hung from his left palm.

I went to him and sat down on the bed next to him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, closing his eyes.

His face was still warm. He must have just killed himself moments before we arrived, the blood still leaking from his wrists, the sheets still wet.

When I stood up, the man let out a sigh.

His eyes reopened.

“Don’t trust them,” the man said in a thick accent.

He was still alive. I went back to him, grabbed a sheet from the bed. I had to stop the bleeding.

As I wrapped his wrist with the sheet, he said in a fading voice, “They look human, but they’re not. They’re no different than the others.”

I went to the other wound, wrapping it with the other side of the sheet.

“They’re demons.” He closed his eyes. “Kill them on sight.”

Although I had his wrists bound tight, stopping the flow of blood, it wasn’t enough to save him. He released a last breath of air and died. If only we’d arrived a little sooner he’d likely have made it. But there was nothing I could have done by that point.

I pulled the comforter over his head and closed the door behind me as I left the room.

The front door was barricaded with multiple bars and latches. They were easy to release from this side. I unlocked the door and stepped outside. It was almost completely dark out there. Looking up through the massive hole in the roof, I could see the stars coming out. The sound of squealing clusters echoed through the building as they began climbing out of the sludge-filled pit, beginning their nightly hunt. The others were still down there. They hadn’t arrived yet.

I went back inside and looked out of the barricaded window, wondering if they were okay down there. The boat bobbed in the water. They weren’t inside anymore.

Before I went back toward the door, something caught my attention across the street. A figure climbed up the side of an apartment building and stepped onto the rooftop. The building wasn’t as tall as the one I was in, so I could see a full view of the other roof. I recognized the figure. It was the female cluster from the bond hotel. I recognized her immediately: her oily back hair dripping down her back, long thin arms with talon-like fingernails.

“Did she follow us?” I asked myself.

But she wasn’t alone. Two more human-shaped figures stepped across the roof toward her. They were both around ten feet tall, the same height as the woman. But other than that they were quite different. They were both male. One had four arms. Another had two heads. I ducked down so that they couldn’t see us.

When they met, the female cluster spoke. She seemed to be asking them questions. The others spoke back. I couldn’t understand what they were saying from here, but they were definitely having a conversation. They understood each other. They were intelligent.

The conversation quickly turned into an argument. I assumed that was what it was based on their violent body language. They pointed at each other, yelling in crackly tones. It seemed like they were about to kill each other. But before it escalated, the two males turned and left. They went back the way they came and leapt over the side of the building.

The female stayed where she was, watching the others as they left. She seemed to be holding her ground, making sure they didn’t come back. As I watched her, I wondered if those intelligent clusters were what the Filipino man was talking about before he died. The demons. Perhaps he’d had experiences with them just as we had.

The one we encountered definitely seemed like a demon, but she never did anything to hurt us. She repaired our generator, she gave us food and weapons, she saved us from the feral clusters, she built us a boat so we could escape. She was an angel, not a demon. The only reason we were still alive was because of her.

I wondered if the man who lived here didn’t have the same experience with the intelligent clusters as we had. Perhaps the ones on this side of the city weren’t friendly. Perhaps they were ferocious killers, just like the other clusters. Only they had the intelligence the other clusters lacked. I saw how deadly the female cluster was. If there were others like her that wanted to kill us instead of protect us then we were going to be in serious trouble if we were to ever run into them.

When the others arrived, I made a bed on the floor with couch cushions and blankets where they could place Mike comfortably. I told them about the body before they took him into the bedroom.

“So he’s dead?” North asked.

I nodded. Then I mentioned what the man had said about the demons, and then explained the situation with the intelligent clusters. North didn’t believe me. He looked out the window and didn’t see anyone on the rooftop across the street. But when I mentioned how she created the ship we came in on, he had no choice but to believe me.

After Gary covered Mike with a blanket, he looked around the apartment, checking the defenses and making sure the place was secure. “This should be fine for the night. It’ll hold at least until morning.”

North spit. “As long as the place doesn’t come crashing down on us.”

As the others rationed out the last of our food, I searched the apartment for anything useful. There wasn’t much food left. No canned goods. All the guy had left were dried goods. Macaroni and cheese, spaghetti noodles, oatmeal. It was still edible even if we couldn’t cook it. But what we were really lacking was water. We couldn’t get any moisture out of the dried food.

There were no guns or ammo in the apartment. There were plenty of tools and a few makeshift weapons the former occupant must have constructed—a baseball bat with nails poking through it, a strip of metal sharpened into a machete-like blade with a thick quantity of duct tape wrapped around the base as a handle, and a spear-like weapon made from a butcher knife and a broomstick. I took the blade. It was a little over a foot long, easy to carry. Judging by the amount of blood and ink dried to the side of the weapon, the former owner surely used this one for protection much more than the others.

I found a radio on the floor by the window. It was battery-powered, so there was a chance it still worked. I brought it to the only chair that was still in one piece and sat it down. But when I turned it on, it issued only static.

“Anything?” Gary asked.

I tried changing to different stations, adjusting the antennae, listening carefully with my ear to the speaker. But there was nothing.

I shook my head. “You’d think there’d be some kind of emergency broadcast.”

“The thing’s got to be broken,” North said.

“No, it’s working fine.” I continued moving the dial, going through the stations again. “There’s just nothing out there.” Then I looked up at Gary. “How is that possible?”

Gary turned away. “Maybe there’s interference preventing us from getting a signal. Like the cell phones.”

I didn’t believe that was it. If anyone was broadcasting, even outside of the city, we’d have picked it up.

“Or maybe they’re keeping us in the dark on purpose,” North said. “Maybe they don’t want anyone to get out of here alive. To keep it quiet.”

“You think they can really hide this from the rest of the world?” I asked.

Gary answered for him. “If they evacuated everyone before the clusters appeared in the city, I believe they could keep this quiet. They could blame it all on some kind of radiation leak. Like what happened in Chernobyl, where the area was quarantined for decades. They could do the same thing here. Block the place off, trap everyone inside, and keep everyone away from it for as long as they needed to kill all the creatures and clean the place up.”

“Unless the clusters get out,” I said. “They wouldn’t be able to cover it up then.”

North shook his head. “Never underestimate the effectiveness of the American military.”

I turned off the radio and set it on the ground. I didn’t think the broadcasts were being blocked. It just seemed like no one was out there. Not anywhere.

“They’re not trying to cover it up,” Vic said.

We looked at him. He seemed to know something we didn’t.

“Then why aren’t they broadcasting?” I asked.

Porn Eyes sat down in a corner and curled himself into a ball, getting ready to sleep. His hands were still tied to his back.

“The place is a graveyard,” Vic said, closing his eyes. “You don’t need to broadcast anything to a graveyard.”

We slept in the center of the living room. The sound of chirping clusters pierced our ears. They were everywhere, crawling all around us, both inside and outside the building. Gary, Mike, and Porn Eyes fell into deep sleep almost immediately. But it took me hours to fall asleep and North couldn’t sleep at all.

While I tried to sleep, North paced the room. His nervousness made me nervous. He’d lay down for a few minutes, then stand up, check the window, examine the strength of the barricade on the door, then lay back down. Every time there was a noise he grabbed his rifle and pointed it at the entrance. The man needed sleep more than anyone, but he couldn’t relax. I wasn’t sure if he was always an insomniac or if it was just the situation that kept him up. But he just wouldn’t stay still. I was only able to fall asleep once the soldier locked himself in the bathroom, presumably to attempt sleeping in the bathtub.

I woke up to a tall shadowy figure hovering over Mike. Based on the height, I realized it was the female cluster. She’d quietly removed the barricade from the window and crawled inside with us. She cut open Mike’s shirt and stared down at his wound. I looked at the others, but they were asleep. North was still in the bathroom.

My first thought was that she was attempting to treat his wound. The creature leaned down toward his caved-in chest, caressing her talon-like fingers across the purple skin. Then she bit into his wound, tearing away a large strip of flesh.

When Mike screamed, she spit out the piece of meat and scooped him up in her long white arms. The others woke up to see her with Mike. North burst through the bathroom door and aimed his rifle at her.

“What the fuck!” North cried.

He fired two shots, but the cluster leapt out of the way as quickly as a grasshopper. She flew over Gary and landed outside the window, clutching to the windowsill with nothing but her toes, holding Mike’s wheezing body in her claws. Just before she leapt away, the woman looked back at me. Her cold white eyes locked with mine. Before North could fire at her again, she was gone. She leapt across the street to the next building. Then sped away, carrying Mike in her arms like he was a wild rabbit hanging from a coyote’s jaws.

North ran to the window and pointed his rifle outside, but there was nothing he could do. He decided to save the ammo.

“What the hell was that?” he said.

“That was… her,” I said. “The one I told you about.”

I couldn’t believe it. She took him. She bit into him like a piece of steak and then ran off with him.

“I thought you said she was trying to help us?” North asked.

I didn’t know what to say. I thought she was trying to help us, but I clearly saw her take a bite out of Mike before she carried him away.

“I guess I was wrong…” I said.

Then I wondered if she wasn’t actually trying to help us. Perhaps she was just trying to keep us alive so that she could eat us later.

“Why would she build us a boat if she only planned to kill us?” Gary asked.

I shook my head. I had no idea.

“Maybe she was hoping we’d lead her to more food,” Vic said.

It didn’t sit right with me. Was she really just keeping us alive to eat us later? I wondered if she took him for another reason. Perhaps the other intelligent clusters planned to attack us and the only way to sway them was to give them an offering, give them the wounded person who wasn’t likely to survive anyway. Or perhaps she knew Mike was slowing us down. Perhaps she took him away so that the rest of us would have a better chance of surviving, knowing that we’d never put him out of his misery ourselves. I wasn’t sure.

Whatever the reason, we didn’t feel safe in that apartment after that. We slept in shifts for the rest of the night. None of us were able to get the image of what had happened out of our heads.

Downtown

In the morning, we headed out toward the hospital. We didn’t need to go there as urgently as before, not with Mike gone. But we still felt it was the right place to go. If people were still being evacuated from the city it would be from there.

We pedaled in silence for the first few hours. None of us could believe what happened to Mike. We didn’t think his chances of making it were very good, but never expected what happened to him. I tried to block it out of my mind.

As we entered the downtown area, there were large lakes of sludge we had to traverse. They were likely once parks or parking lots, now wide open lagoons of ink. Shriveled leafless trees poked out of the surface, half-melted from soaking in bonding fluid.

The clusters were more active in these areas. They swam through the murky water, coiling around trees, making large waves in the fluid. When they surfaced, they sprayed clouds of ink from orifices like the blowholes of hunchback whales.

There was something strange about the clusters here. They didn’t look right. When they emerged from the fluid, they were blurred and distorted.

North realized it as well. “What’s wrong with them?”

It took me a few moments to figure it out. When another cluster emerged, closer than the others, I saw that the blurriness only covered certain sections of its body. The parts that looked like genitals.

“The censorship machines,” I said. “They must still be functioning here.”

The stupid censor technology that scrambled the bodies of nudists was working on the clusters here. But their bodies were so distorted, it was likely difficult for the machines to register what were obscene body parts and what was just mutant flesh.

Then I looked back at Gary. His face was also censored. A pixilated blob appeared where his head used to be. I held back a laugh. The machines must have registered his doubled face as something obscene.

“I hate censorship machines,” Gary said through the blurry cloud around his head.

We tried to hold back our snickers as we pedaled through the murk. I just realized how difficult life must have been for Gary in the city, constantly being blurred out just for looking like his normal self. Maybe it made it easier for him to hide his deformities from the people around him, but I could see it as incredibly frustrating to live that way day in and out.

The deeper into downtown we got, the more signs of people we came across. Campfire smoke from balconies. Barricaded windows. Messages spray-painted on walls that begged for help. Whenever we passed an apartment that looked lived in, we called up to it. But nobody would answer. Their campfire would be burning, food cooking in pots over the flames. But only silence. We didn’t hear or see anyone. We had to assume they were either hiding from us or recently killed.

Farther down, the signs of life became less civilized. Strips of cluster meat on clotheslines dried in the sun. Messages warning they’ll shoot trespassers and looters on sight spray-painted across the walls. And things got even worse from there. Human skulls displayed on spikes from balcony railings, dead bodies hung from nooses, insane messages scrawled in blood about paying tribute to the dark gods from below. We didn’t bother calling out to survivors anymore.

“Society collapsed pretty quickly,” I said, as we passed a corpse full of so many kitchen knives it looked like a porcupine.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of it all. It seemed too absurd to be real.

“With all that happened, it’s not surprising so many would lose their minds,” Gary said.

“But within the course of a single week?” I asked.

Gary nodded. “A week is plenty of time to drive a man mad.”

Vic didn’t seem concerned with the mental state of the survivors in this part of the city. He just eyeballed the corpse as we passed it and said, “They’re idiots. Hanging these bodies around will only attract predators.”

Gunshots from a nearby rooftop. A couple of bullets ricocheted off the side of the ship. We couldn’t see the shooter. Just heard the shots. We weren’t sure if it was a warning or if they were actually trying to kill us.

“Get down,” I said, but we couldn’t crunch down very far and still pedal. Gary couldn’t at all.

North aimed his rifle in the direction of the gunfire. There was no sign of him.

“Let’s just keep going,” Gary said.

North popped off a couple shots in the direction of the shooter.

I said, “Don’t waste the ammo. You’ll never hit him.”

North nodded. “I just wanted him to know we’re armed. Make him think twice about shooting at us.”

But the shooter wasn’t deterred. He fired two more shots. This time we saw him. He wore what looked like a hood made of cluster flesh. I wonder if he wore the hood to trick other clusters into thinking he was one of them. If so he had the wrong idea, because clusters attacked each other just as much as they did humans. Perhaps it was a way to scare other humans away.

“Motherfucker,” North said, firing a couple of more shots.

Two more shooters popped shots at us from windows on our right. These men were also wearing cluster flesh for clothes, but they only had small caliber pistols to shoot with. Their range wasn’t very far.

But there was a lot more than these three. A dozen more shooters appeared on the rooftops, running across plywood bridges they’d constructed to get from building to building. They were following us. It wasn’t just a couple of random crazies. This was a whole gang of complete psychopaths.

“We need to get out of here,” I said, pedaling with all my strength.

Then a storm of gunfire erupted around us. It sounded like heavy rain as bullets ricocheted off the metal exterior of the ship. We ducked down as far as we could. There were plenty of spaces on the boat for bullets to pass through, but the patchwork roof over our heads was capable of shielding us from most shots from above.

“They want our boat,” North said, while returning fire.

He was right. A boat was a person’s only chance of escaping this nightmare of a city. They were going to do whatever they could to get it, even though they all couldn’t possibly fit on it. They’d probably kill us and then kill each other over it.

The gunfire was attracting clusters to the surface. The sound of bullets hitting the ship drew a tentacled beast toward us, its body half-blurred from the censorship machines, squealing and chirping as it emerged next to us.

“Look out,” I yelled.

The creature whipped a tentacle of oily limbs at the ship, knocking us backward on impact. I was thrown out of my seat and the steering wheel turned, tilting the ship onto its side. North fired a few rounds into the creature, driving it back under the surface. When the ship fell upright, buckets of black ink sprayed inside, covering North and Gary.

“We can’t keep this up,” Gary yelled, wiping sludge from his face.

“Should I turn around?” I asked.

Porn Eyes shook his head. “Keep going.”

We continued pedaling as the bullets hit the metal plating of the ship. Another cluster emerged from the fluid and rammed itself into the side of the boat, but shrieked and thrashed upon impact. Blood sprayed against me, coating my neck and chest. The creature impaled itself on the exterior spikes. After pulling itself from the metal points, the creature fell back under the water.

A bullet made it through our defenses, grazing North’s arm and landing deep into his upper thigh. He cried out and then opened fire at random shooters crouching on a nearby balcony. His bullets sprayed through the railing, hitting the wall behind the shooters, but it didn’t seem like he got anyone. As blood poured out of his leg, he dropped his rifle and grasped it with his hands. Gary ripped a strip of cloth from his shirt to create a tourniquet and, while still pedaling as fast as he could, he tied it around North’s upper leg. He tightened it until the bleeding stopped.

When I saw what was waiting up ahead, I nearly leapt from the boat to escape.

My mouth dropped open. “Shit…”

We were approaching an alleyway. A rope bridge stretched over it, four gunmen standing above us with police-issue shotguns. At their angle, they had a clear shot at all of us. The blasts would tear us apart and leave the boat intact. We were fucked.

“Take them out,” North said.

But he and Gary were focused on stopping his bleeding. Porn Eyes had his wrists tied behind his back. And I had my hands on the steering wheel. There wasn’t time to take out the shooters before they got us.

“Take cover,” I yelled. It was all we had time to do.

As I leapt from my seat and ducked into the space Mike had been laying, covering my upper arms in his half-dried blood, gunshots rang through my ears. But they weren’t shotgun blasts.

“Get back to the wheel,” Porn Eyes yelled.

I looked back and saw a machine gun in the killer’s hands, unloading it on the men on the rope bridge. The rope that had tied his wrists lay on the floor at his feet. The son of a bitch was free. He must have untied himself quite a while ago and was only pretending to still be bound. But I didn’t have time to worry about having an armed killer loose on our boat. I returned to my seat and steered the ship through the alley.

Even while pedaling, Porn Eyes was a crack shot. He not only took out the shooters in five quick shots, he fired through the rope bridge and cut it down. Two reinforcements stepped onto the bridge just as the rope connecting it was severed. Before they could fire a shot, they fell into the sludge, screaming and reaching out for help.

As we passed the submerged mad men, tentacles wrapped around them, constricting them like anacondas in a swamp. With their clothing made of cluster flesh, I couldn’t tell the difference between them and the creatures wrapped around their bodies.

With a rifle in his hands, Porn Eyes didn’t stop at the shooters on the bridge. He took aim at the men firing at us from the rooftops. Unlike North, he did not use the spray and pray method. He was precise. Every bullet hit its target. It was almost beautiful watching the skeletal man firing his weapon. He took aim, fired, and dropped his mark. I couldn’t even see the men before he shot them. It looked as though he was just shooting at an empty balcony or a shadow on the roof top. Then I’d see a body drop over a railing into the sludge or a splatter of blood hit a wall. The man was a grim reaper in the flesh.

By the time we made it to the other side of the alley, the shooters had lost most of their numbers. Every shot they fired was paid back with a bullet to the head. They quickly learned to keep their heads down. This boat of ours was well protected.

Vic was a scumbag. He killed my friends. He wanted to kill me. But he probably just saved all of our lives.

North decided to thank him by shoving a barrel into the back of his head. “Put it down.”

The skull-faced killer held the rifle out and allowed North to take it from him.

North looked at Gary. “Tie him up.”

As I steered us deeper into the downtown area, I looked back and said, “He just saved our asses.”

North shook his head. “He’s a killer.”

“A killer that we need on our side,” I said.

“You think he’s actually on our side? The only reason he defended this boat was to save his own ass. He doesn’t give a shit about us. The son of a bitch will stab us in the back the first chance he gets.”

“I’d trust him more as an ally than I would a prisoner.”

Porn Eyes just sat there with his hands raised, listening to our conversation about him. He looked as though he were smiling through his naked teeth.

“So you just forget everything he’s done? He killed two of my men. I can’t let that slide.”

“I’m not asking you to forget what he’s done. I’m just saying that our chances of survival are much higher with a gun in his hands than his hands tied behind his back.”

North wouldn’t argue with me anymore. He looked at Gary. “What do you think?”

Gary rubbed his chin with two of his right arms.

“We’ve got two good options,” he said, lowering one arm and raising two fingers. “We either trust him and give him a weapon. Or we kill him and get it over with. Keeping him prisoner is no longer feasible.”

“My vote is to give him a weapon,” I said.

“I am in agreement,” Gary said.

North shook his head, but he yielded to our decision. He handed Porn Eyes his rifle back and said, “If he turns on us it’s your doing.”

Vic took back the gun and set it down on his lap. He did not say a word to us. He didn’t even look in our direction. He just stared forward, watching the buildings around us, his eyes bulging from his skinless skeletal face.

Passing through a forest of high rise apartment buildings, the black waters were calm and glistened like onyx. Clouds filled the sky, squeezing out the sunlight. A cold breeze flowed through the buildings and chilled us to the bone.

Then we heard something we never thought we’d hear: music. At first, I thought I was imagining it, thought it was something formed in the back of my brain, but the deeper we went the louder it grew. It was violin music. I couldn’t tell if it was a recording or if somebody was playing a violin from somewhere high above. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. No clusters seemed to be drawn to it. No person seemed to be playing it. The music just echoed through the streets like a haunting lullaby.

We didn’t speak about the music, but we were all affected by it in different ways. It was strange how the same song could affect people so differently. North was frightened by it. Vic was annoyed. I was uplifted, like the violin was a ray of sunshine poking through the clouds, brightening our path. But Gary seemed to be the most affected. It was difficult to tell exactly how he felt due to his double-faced mutation, but it appeared as if he was both moved and saddened by the sound.

On my break from pedaling, I moved to the back of the vessel and sat down on the floor behind Gary—the only section of floor that wasn’t a pool of black sludge. I leaned against the side of the ship, my back cooled by the wind bouncing off the water, and listened to the violin music echoing from above. I closed my eyes and unwound the stress from my mind. It was the first time I felt relaxed since I was born as Stork.

Then a faint sound broke my calm state, the sound of sniffling that issued from Gary’s hulking form. He was crying. I looked over at him. He wasn’t crying because of our situation. He wasn’t crying because of all the people who died. It was something the violin music triggered in him.

Although his back was facing me, he seemed to know I was watching him.

He sucked up his tears and said, “Gary was a beautiful violin player.”

I knew he wasn’t referring to himself. He meant the component of his, the one who was originally named Gary. It probably confused North and Vic, but they didn’t ask him to elucidate. They just ignored him.

But I listened.

“He wasn’t very good at playing the violin,” Gary continued. “He wasn’t very good at anything, really. But it was the way he played it that was beautiful. He put more passion into every chord he played than a normal violinist would in their entire careers. His music was rarely in tune, but that didn’t matter to him. It was beautifully dissonant, haunting in a way that reflected the pain burning inside of him.”

I found it strange how he saw a part of himself as another person, as though he had lost the man called Gary rather than combined with him, like the act of joining deleted everything that the original Gary had been apart from his memories.

“But when he joined, he was no longer able to play that way. He joined with another person who was a much more skilled musician, much more mentally sound and down to earth as a human being. But it ruined his music. It made him far worse. He went from playing unique, strange songs that were heavily flawed to songs that were perfectly mediocre.”

He paused, listening to the music playing above us. I realized the violin playing was also flawed and dissonant. What was most moving about it wasn’t the skill of the player, but how much feeling they put into it, the kind of feeling only a dying person would exude. Like whoever it was up there was playing the music for the closing credits of their own life.

“They say joining is supposed to improve us, remove our weaknesses and improve our strengths,” Gary said. “But that’s not always the case. By getting rid of our flaws, we sometimes destroy that which makes us special. But it seems the more I melt, the more I realize that it’s our flaws that tend to make us great.”

I asked, “If Gary felt that way, why did he join? Wouldn’t he have preferred to stay as he was?”

“He thought he was worthless. He was haunted by his flaws. He seemed to be bad at everything: he was always the slowest runner, he had the sloppiest handwriting, he had horrible social skills, he barely passed his classes with Cs and Ds, he couldn’t draw, he had a bad memory, he was rather unattractive, he was worthless when it came to cooking, cleaning or having responsibilities of any kind. So he always saw himself as a lesser person than anyone around him. He wanted to be better. He wanted to be better at everything.”

“But he didn’t become better?”

“He became worse,” Gary said. “He didn’t realize how great he was until he saw himself through someone else’s eyes. He had an innocence about him. He saw the world in a way that nobody else did. He could admire beauty in things that other people wouldn’t give a second thought to. The color of decaying roses, the smell of spider webs in the garden, the sound of wrinkles forming on his fingertips after taking a long bath, the texture of steam in his lungs when breathing in a hot bowl of tomato rice soup; these were things that gave him endless joy and comfort.”

As we pedaled through the area, the music became faint. I looked back, but there was still no sign of who was playing it. The violin could’ve been played by something above the clouds for all I knew.

“But it wasn’t the same after he joined, after he became me,” Gary said. “I do not have the ability to see things the way he saw them. I am unimpressed by the mundane. It takes much to move me emotionally. I’ve just seen too many things through too many eyes to retain that child-like sense of wonder Gary had. But I still have the memories. I still remember exactly what it was like growing up as Gary. His years were the best years of all of my lives.”

“Did Gary cause your… mutations?”

The large man shook his head. “That didn’t come until later. I tried combining with other people, trying to find a combination that would get Gary back. But it didn’t work. Gary was one of a kind. There would never be anyone like him ever again. Eventually, I combined with the wrong person. I mutated. And I’ve only been mutating worse ever since.”

Then Gary let his tears flow, he didn’t hold back.

In a choky voice, he said, “I don’t care if I die out here. I don’t care about any of my other parts. I just don’t want Gary to die. All that’s left of him is memories. I don’t want the world to lose those memories.”

I placed my hand on his sweaty, bulging back.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get out of this.”

I stood up and returned to my seat.

Then I looked back at the mutated man and said, “I won’t let Gary die.”

And although my words didn’t relieve his fear, the fact that I cared enough to say them meant a great deal to him.

Hospital

As we approached the city center, we were bombarded by a series of small earthquakes. Our vessel trembled and cracked. Rolling waves of sludge slammed against the side, splashing toxic soup into the ship, pooling on the floor below the pedals. After one quake stopped, there would be only a few short moments to regain our bearings before the next one began.

“What’s causing it?” I asked.

I looked at North and Gary, but they were as confused as I was. This place wasn’t known for earthquakes.

Porn Eyes said, “Something big.”

The buildings in this area of town were mostly demolished. We passed islands of rubble where skyscrapers once stood. The high rises that remained were only just barely still standing, with large sections stripped away, leaving behind mere skeletons of their former architecture. Some of the structures were split into halves, others were hollowed out in the middle like something tunneled right through them, and a few even fell against one another, holding each other up like a house of cards.

The earth rumbled around us, causing the buildings to collapse even more. Boulders of debris crashed into the water ahead of us. A concrete landslide nearly hit our rear. Vic was right. Something big was causing this. Something bigger than anything we’d encountered before.

We couldn’t see what was causing the earthquakes, but we heard it from several blocks away. A roaring squeal shook our vessel and sent piercing pains through our ears.

“We shouldn’t continue this way,” Vic said. “Whatever that is, we’re heading right for it.”

We all agreed that it was a terrible idea to continue in this direction, but we didn’t turn back. The hospital was our best bet for rescue. If we didn’t go there we had no idea where else we’d go. So we held our course.

“It’s either this or begin the two-week trek out of the city,” I said. “I’d rather risk it.”

They didn’t respond. They just kept pedaling, thinking about whether it was safer to continue to the hospital or spend at least two more weeks traveling through the city. The rumbling sounds grew louder with every block we covered, but we kept moving forward, hoping we were making the right decision.

“Let’s just get as close as we can,” I said. “If it’s too dangerous we can go.”

When we saw the hospital in the distance, it surprised us that the place still stood. One wing had collapsed into the sludge, creating a mountain of rubble and concrete, but the majority of the place was still intact. The other buildings in the area did not fare so well. They’d all toppled over, leaving the hospital alone in a sea of black fluid.

“It seems clear,” I told the others.

There were no longer earthquakes in this area. No sign of a behemoth or what was making those loud roaring sounds. The waters were still.

We pedaled across the black lake, staring at the tall white structure.

“It doesn’t look like any evacuation took place here,” Vic said.

I couldn’t tell what he meant by it. The place was just as deserted as the rest of the city. Of course there was an evacuation.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

Porn Eyes pointed at the roof. “Because look at all the people who were left behind.”

There were dozens of people standing on the roof of the hospital. Perhaps hundreds of them. All waiting there as though somebody was coming along to pick them up at any minute.

“Let’s go check it out,” I said.

Porn Eyes shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. We should leave.”

“Leave?” North cried. “This is what we were looking for. There’s even people. They’ve got to be waiting for the next evacuation chopper.”

“And if they’re not? If they were abandoned there and have no way of escape, they’ll fight us over this boat, just as the last people we came across.”

North didn’t have a response. We agreed that it was a possibility, but we still moved forward. We had to see what the situation was.

As we neared the hospital, we realized just how many people there were. They didn’t look like they were being evacuated. They looked like they were starving and desperate. They looked like they were frightened to death. There was no telling what they’d do.

“We shouldn’t go,” Porn Eyes repeated.

I agreed once I saw their faces. The people looked at us as though we were there to rescue them. They hopped up and down, waving white sheets at us, cheering to see us coming toward them. Their desperation would certainly be our undoing.

“I think he’s right,” I said.

“No, keep going,” North said. “We’re almost there.”

I looked at Porn Eyes. He nodded at me. We both stopped pedaling. Then Gary stopped with me. We weren’t going anywhere until we were unanimous.

“Keep going,” North said.

None of us obeyed.

“I said…” He pointed his rifle into Vic’s back. “Keep going!”

With only North pedaling we moved slowly, but we were still headed toward the hospital. I had to turn the steering wheel to direct us away from it.

North moved his weapon from Vic to me. “What do you think you’re doing? Do I have to shoot all of you?”

Porn Eyes said, “This boat is our only way out of the city. If we stop here we’ll lose it.”

“It’s worth the risk,” North said.

I shook my head. “You know it’s not. These people are obviously worse off than we are.”

North raised the barrel of the gun from my chest to my forehead. “I don’t care. I’m done. One way or another, I’m done.” He pointed down at his leg. “My leg is fucked. I can’t row anymore. I need a doctor.”

I kind of felt sorry for the soldier, but I couldn’t give in.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking him right in the eyes. “We can’t risk it.”

North’s finger twitched on the trigger. He was going to do it. I was sure he was going to do it. But I didn’t give in.

Gary suggested something else. “Maybe only one of us should go.”

The rest of us looked at him.

North relaxed his grip on the trigger. “What do you mean?”

“We pull the boat as close as we can to that pile of rubble over there, without docking.” He pointed at the collapsed wing on the side of the building. “One of us swims over, talks to them, reports the situation. If there are evacuation plans, if we’re safe, the rest of us can dock the boat.”

“But who’s going swimming through that shit?” North asked.

“I will,” Gary said. “I’ve already swam a far distance in that stuff. A little more won’t make much of a difference.”

I shook my head. “You can’t do that.”

Gary put two of his hands on my shoulder. “I want to. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

I still didn’t like the idea, but only because I was worried for Gary. If it turned out that it wasn’t safe, we’d probably have to leave him behind.

“Very well,” said Vic. “But don’t call us over unless you know for an absolute fact that rescue is coming.”

All that was left was for North to agree to Gary’s plan. We all stared at him, waiting for a decision, as he continued pointing his rifle at us.

After a moment of hesitation, North sighed and then lowered his weapon. “Fine. We’ll do it your way if you insist. But it’s completely unnecessary. I’m sure we have nothing to worry about.”

I steered the boat back toward the hospital. The people on the roof continued hopping and yelling at us, begging for our assistance. There was nothing we could do for them. I doubted North was right about the evacuation still happening, but I didn’t think Porn Eyes was right either. Leaving without stopping wasn’t a good idea. These people would have information for us. We had to get it from them. As long as Gary was able to get back to the boat to relay the information, the stop was worth it.

“Be careful,” I told Gary.

He nodded his head. “It’ll be fine.”

Then he jumped overboard and swam through the sludge toward the hospital. He didn’t seem even slightly bothered by the black syrup coating his body, burning away layers of skin. He was a powerful swimmer with his three sets of muscled arms, though. It wouldn’t take him long to get out.

The people on the roof pointed their guns down at the surface of the water. At first, I thought they were making sure no clusters attacked Gary. But then I realized it was something else they were worried about.

“Wait a minute…”

I paid closer attention to the people on the roof. They whipped their sheets at a furious speed, pointing into the water, yelling at us. That’s when I realized they weren’t begging for our help.

“They’re trying to warn us,” I said.

The behemoth we heard, the one creating the earthquakes, the one with the roaring squeal that nearly ruptured our eardrums from a mile away—it was there with us, in the water, below.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

I tried calling out to Gary, stopping him from swimming through the soup, begging him to come back, but he couldn’t hear me.

The others were confused about what I was going on about, so I had to spell it out for them: our boat was floating on top of the largest cluster in the city.

North nearly shit his pants when I told him. He looked down, scanning the water like it could jump out at us at any second.

I could see the thing beneath us, less than ten feet down in the murk. There was a massive creature down there, one that took up the entire lake. Even though the fluid was dark we could still see its colossal form, coiling and writhing below.

“Let’s go,” Vic said.

“No way.” North shook his head. “We can’t leave. This might be our only way out of here. Let’s get inside the hospital.”

I looked at Gary swimming up to the rubble leading into the hospital. The more I watched Gary in the sludge the more he looked like a cluster himself. If we hadn’t seen him jump in, we would have thought he was one as well.

“Gary…”

I just realized there might be some gunmen who didn’t see Gary get out of the boat, who were too focused on the creature below us. Some of them might not realize he was a normal mutant and not a cluster.

“They’re not going to realize he’s with us,” I said.

I waved my hands up at the people on the roof, pointing at the mutant swimming toward them, trying to use my body motions to explain he’s with us. When they didn’t seem to understand, I called out to Gary, but he could no longer hear me.

The second Gary stepped out of the fluid, his hulking form covered in sludge, dripping a trail across the rubble toward the opening in the side of the hospital, he raised his arms to warn them not to fire on him. But they were afraid. Not all of them could see he meant them no harm.

“Gary!” I cried.

Three bullets hit him in the chest from shooters on the roof. His arms went limp. Then he dropped.

“Motherfuckers…” Vic aimed his rifle at the roof and opened fire, cutting through a row of survivors.

As Gary hit the ground, blood poured out across the concrete rubble. I couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. He just lay there, his arms curling up around his torso like a dead spider.

“Let’s go!” Porn Eyes cried, as the people on the roof of the hospital opened fire on our boat.

I steered us around and we pedaled in the opposite direction. I didn’t like the idea of leaving Gary behind, but we didn’t have a choice. He was likely dead or going to be dead soon enough. We had to get out of the area as soon as we could.

Without Gary, we couldn’t pedal very fast. North was useless with his wounded leg. Porn Eyes didn’t have much muscle mass in his legs, so he didn’t help much either. I tried to go double-time to make up for their weakness, but it still just wasn’t enough.

A bullet grazed my upper arm, but I didn’t stop pedaling. I didn’t even cry out. I just touched it with my other hand to make sure it wasn’t bleeding too profusely, then I pedaled on.

“We’re not going to make it,” North said.

I normally would have told him to shut up, that we’d make it no matter what. But I didn’t think that was true. This time, I thought he was right. We were fucked.

Behemoth

The gunfire alerted the massive creature below us. Tentacles made of fused together flesh and body parts whipped out of the water around us. Then we found ourselves thrown high into the air as the creature emerged from the sludge.

“Hold on!” I attempted to yell, but hardly anything came out of my mouth. My breath had been pulled out of my lungs due to the force at which we were launched into the air.

As we were about to fall back into sludge, I thought that was it. I thought that was where we would die. But we only fell down a couple dozen feet, bouncing off of thick tentacles, before we were caught. The thing gripped us with fat muscled limbs, holding us in the air. On impact, I fell out of my seat and landed in a pool of sludge at the front of the vessel, slamming my head against the metal edge of a window.

I must have been out for a minute. I woke from blackness to North’s screams. When I pulled myself up, I looked back. The back half of the ship was crushed as the mutant limb squeezed tighter around us. North was trapped inside. His legs caught in the folded metal. Porn Eyes was firing at the tentacles as they coiled around the ship like snakes, but his tiny bullets didn’t do much but spray blood all over the ship.

When I reached the edge, I got a good look at the massive form that held us in the air. The creature was ten times larger than any behemoth we’d ever come across. It took up four city blocks, stood a hundred stories out of the fluid. We were but a flea on the beast’s back.

“Get me out of here!” North cried.

But Porn Eyes did nothing to help him. He grabbed the shotgun, climbed to the roof of the ship, and continued firing on the immense cluster.

“Come back,” I yelled.

Mouths opened all around us and bit into the ship, tearing pieces of metal away. I crawled to North, who reached out and grabbed me, holding me tightly.

“You’ve got to get me out…” he whimpered.

But upon further examination, I could tell there was nothing I could do for him. His legs were twisted inside of the metal. One limb was broken in five places, spikes of bone poking out at three of the breaks. The other limb couldn’t even be seen. At the thigh, it disappeared into a knot of crumpled ship. His blood leaked down the metal at such a fast rate that I knew there was no time to stop it.

I knew I couldn’t sugar-coat it for him. I couldn’t lie.

“I’m sorry…” It was all I could say.

But he wouldn’t accept it. He gripped my arms with all of his strength.

“Help me…” He stared at me with wet pleading eyes. “Don’t go…”

Then I realized why he wouldn’t let me go. He wasn’t as scared of dying as he was scared of dying alone. He wanted me to stay and die in that ship next to him. But I couldn’t give up.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

His eyes burned red with anger. He grabbed at his waist, searching for his sidearm. Like he was going to shoot me if I tried to leave him. But before he could find the weapon, the ship crushed inward, tearing his legs off at the thighs.

I leapt away as the back half of the boat was torn in half, taking North with it. His eyes glared at me as he fell, as though blaming me for what was happening to him. A tentacle pulled the back half of the ship into an enormous cavernous mouth. Teeth and metal shattered into pieces as it bit down. I didn’t see North die. He just disappeared down the thing’s throat.

The rest of the ship was gripped by a number of smaller limbs and dozens of human hands. They weren’t as strong as the limb that took the back half of the vessel. They could barely hold it up. The front half felt as though it would drop at any moment.

Through the hole in the ship, I looked up at Porn Eyes. He was no longer on the roof, but climbing up the massive creature like a fleshy mountain.

“What are you doing?” I called up at him, as he fired at the meaty ground under his feet.

He looked back at me with his bulging eyeballs. His skeletal jaws seemed to grow a smile.

“Come on,” he said.

I looked out at the mass of flesh. Tentacles whipped around Vic’s face.

“If you’re going to die…” He pulled the shotgun off of his back and blasted a sofa-sized eyeball out of its socket. “Die fighting.”

I scanned the floor for a weapon. There wasn’t anything left. I stuck my hand into the black fluid, searching for my assault rifle, but it wasn’t in there. It must have fallen out with the back half. But as I continued worming my finger through the murk, I found something. It was the homemade machete-like weapon I’d found in the apartment the night before.

I pulled it out of the sludge and flicked away the fluid. It was all I had to use, but it was better than nothing.

“Aim for a vein,” I yelled out at Porn Eyes as I climbed out of the ship.

But he was far ahead of me, racing up the creature, going for the closest thing he could find to a head—a giant lumpy blob of meat with thousands of appendages. If he was going for any kind of a brain he wasn’t going to find it. The thing likely had hundreds of thousands of brains, only some of them linked together. We couldn’t think of it as one creature. It was a collection of many creatures melted together.

The behemoth screamed and thrashed in the water, whipping at us like fire ants biting its back. When I jumped out of the vessel and landed on the creature’s flesh, I hit a slippery patch of meat and slid several feet. Catching myself on a small human leg sticking out of its side, I saw myself staring into a group of fish-like eyeballs blinking at me.

The tentacles holding the remains of the ship were quickly losing their grip on the vessel. One by one, the tentacles let it go. And once it fell it would come right at me.

I put my blade into my belt loop and then climbed the creature’s limbs, grabbing arms and legs, trying to get out of the boat’s path. As the ship fell, I jumped at a collection of antennae-like appendages. The vessel rolled past me, down the side of the beast and splashed into the fluid far below.

Holding the twitchy antennae, I looked at the flesh in front of me. A large slit was opening around me. A vertical mouth-like orifice unfolded, revealing rows of pointed teeth.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…”

Lifting my legs before the lips of the mouth could wrap around my lower body, I climbed up the antennae one appendage at a time. But some of the antennae weren’t as strong as others. My weight ripped them out as easily as eyelashes.

This cluster was made of more than the usual beings. It wasn’t just a cross between rodents, insects, and humans as the ones we encountered in the Wire District. This one was made of more exotic animals. Like all the animals in the zoo had been broken down into a soup to make this creature, there were parts that were distinctly elephant, with tusks and long trunk-like snouts. There were also shark, tiger, zebra, crocodile, ostrich, giraffe, and even dinosaur DNA in the mix. I wasn’t sure if it was really dinosaur, but there were sections of the creature that clearly looked stegosaurus-like, with pointed stegosaur plates growing down its side. Perhaps the DNA was taken from the bones in the dinosaur exhibit at the museum, melted down and infused into the mix. Or perhaps it was just a coincidence.

I climbed a fuzzy giraffe-like limb, then stabbed my machete into the creature to use as support to get further up. I’d have to climb quite a ways up before I’d be on a flat surface.

Looking out at the hospital, the survivors there were also under attack by the massive creature. They fired at its tentacles that whipped at the building, running and screaming in a panic as the structure crumbled around them. Several humans were snatched up by long wiry arms and brought into an assortment of animal-like mouths on the other side of its body. There was nothing we could do to help them. They were on their own. But part of me was glad they were getting what they deserved. They killed Gary. They alerted the creature. They were the whole reason we were all going to die. But there were other parts of me that made me shake off that thought. It was nobody’s fault.

I climbed a section of alligator scales until I made it to a ledge of flesh, rolling over and grabbing hold of a pair of shark fins. While resting, I scanned the creature’s back for any sign of Porn Eyes. But the killer was nowhere in sight. He was either dead or made it to the other side of the behemoth. I heard gunshots coming from his direction, but I couldn’t tell if they were his or from the survivors on the hospital roof.

The creature rolled onto its side, lunging at the hospital. I fell forward as the ledge of flesh went vertical, landing on its back. The behemoth was now flat enough to walk on. But it was unsteady. The creature moved forward, creating earthquakes all around me. The buildings in the distance shook and crumbled. But I couldn’t waste time. I ran across the mass of flesh, hacking at tentacles and claws as I moved.

“There,” I heard somebody yell at me.

Porn Eyes wasn’t too far away. He pointed at the roof of the hospital. The creature was straddling the building, wrapping its mass of flesh around the structure. A portion of its body lay flat on the roof to get better access to its prey, creating a bridge we could cross.

“Come on,” Porn Eyes waved.

I hacked my way across the blob, stepping over human faces and squirming limbs that grew from the surface of the monster’s flesh, heading in the direction of the hospital. Porn Eyes blasted his way forward, creating a path for us to follow. He was about ten car lengths ahead of me.

But the farther we went, the more difficult it was to traverse. The flesh jerked and writhed below us. And there were appendages like we hadn’t seen before. Tentacles with shark-like jaws, car-sized arms with hook-shaped talons, cavernous mouth pits we’d have to leap over. But we kept moving forward. It was our only way through.

Something came at Porn Eyes before he saw it. A giant’s arm with elephant tusk fingernails swung at him as he ran past it.

“Look out!” I yelled.

But it was too late. The tusks hit him across the chest and threw him into a pit of teeth. He climbed up before the teeth could close around him, but he was caught by several snake-like tentacles before he could get to his feet.

The skeleton of a man struggled. Even as he was bound and unarmed, he wouldn’t give up. The giant arm pointed at him like a scorpion’s stinger aiming at its prey. When I was close enough, I got a better look at the massive limb. It had eyes on the knuckles of its fist, the tusk-like fingernails dripped poisonous fluid, coated in fur with an orange and black tiger-stripe pattern. The thing was a behemoth-sized monster itself, yet it was only a single appendage of the mountainous cluster we stood upon.

As I ran at the appendage, pointing my machete at it, I saw Porn Eyes look at me with a disappointed expression. He knew my actions were pointless. There wasn’t even a shred of appreciation for my attempt to save him. It was as though he would’ve respected me more if I left him and used the opportunity to escape. But that wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be. Respect me or not, I wasn’t going to just let him die if I could help it.

But the second I arrived, the great limb just swiped me away. It was like being hit by a boulder. The wind knocked out of me. I fell over Porn Eyes, landing in a pool of cluster sweat.

Porn Eyes just laughed at me. He looked back, watching me as I struggled to get to my feet, saturated in the beast’s armpit-scented sweat. Baby hands poked out of the moisture and grabbed at my legs.

“It was a valiant effort,” he said.

Then the hand slapped down on him, crushing him like a fly on an obese man’s thigh. It slurped up his corpse into the maw in its palm. There was nothing I could do but watch. A bulge formed on its wrist as the creature swallowed his remains. The only thing left of the man when the hand pulled away was a section of his skinless skull with a porn-imprinted eyeball staring up at me.

While looking into that eye, I could almost see what he was thinking just before he died. It was as though he knew the moment we entered the Wire District we were all already dead. Our struggle for survival had been pointless from the start, but at least we tried. Trying was all that mattered. We could’ve just given up and killed ourselves, escaping a horrific death at the hands of the clusters. But that wouldn’t have been a satisfying end for someone like him. Dying with regret was the worst way to go.

The monstrous appendage turned its attention to me. Its fingers opened like the jaws of a shark, revealing a massive orifice in the center of its palm. The hand mouth widened like the maw of a snake, coming down at me as if to swallow me whole.

I raised the machete, waiting for it to strike. If it swallowed me I was going to cut the thing all the way down its throat. I wouldn’t just give up. I wouldn’t die with regret.

“Come on, motherfucker!”

As the thing came at me, I swung my machete. Blood sprayed into my face. I thought it was me who cut its hand-shaped head from its neck, but I wasn’t responsible. My blade barely nicked one of its teeth. As the handless appendage whipped in the air, a geyser of blood splashing out of its throat, I backed away.

Then I saw her.

She emerged from behind the monstrous appendage, her claws dripping with blood. It was the female cluster. She came to me, towering over me. I could see all the swirling details in her twisted naked flesh, the seashell patterns in her plated nippleless breasts, the moist fetus wiggling in her hollow womb. Her big white eyes glared down at me.

I pointed my machete at her. She wasn’t going to take me alive.

Her mouth opened, exposing small jagged teeth. Then she said in a deep gurgling voice, “We need to get you out of here.”

Then she leapt to my right and sliced a tentacle in half before it could stab me with stinger-shaped fangs. She wasn’t trying to kill me. She really was there to help.

“Quickly,” she said.

She turned to lead me off of the giant creature. But I was in too much shock to follow.

“Wait a minute…” I said, reaching out for her.

She stopped and looked back at me.

“Who are you?” I asked.

I was too curious to learn who she was and what she was all about. She was an intelligent cluster who was trying to help me. I had to know what made her tick. I had to know if I could really trust her.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked. “Now?”

I nodded.

She said, “My name is Hydra Hyuna.”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

It didn’t make any sense to me. How could she be Hydra?

“That’s right.” She raised a talon to her right eyeball. “I’m you.”

Then she grabbed me up into her arms and leapt across the mountain of flesh like a flea leaping off of a mangy canine.

As she carried me to safety, I asked her, “What the hell are you talking about? How are you me?”

She was busy dodging tentacles and hopping over massive shark-like mouths. She didn’t answer me.

When we got to the roof of the hospital, she just set me down in a safe spot and returned to the creature. She didn’t look back. She just left me there to fend for myself as she went to save the other people on the rooftop.

Two survivors came to me and pulled me to my feet. They were middle-aged men in filth-covered scrubs. Both of them must have worked in the hospital before all of this happened.

“Where the hell did you come from?” one of them asked me.

I couldn’t respond, too fascinated by Hydra. I stood there, watching as she cut through the creature like a cluster-shaped bullet.

One of them asked, “Who the hell is she?”

“What the hell is she?” the other asked.

I continued watching her. She used her razor-sharp talons to cut the creature up the center of its face, digging for a vein.

“She’s me,” I said.

The other survivors didn’t ask me what I meant by that. They, too, were enraptured watching the cluster fight. She sliced the thing open with precision, going for its major blood vessels. Soon the entire roof was covered in a pool of the thing’s blood.

And she wasn’t alone. On the back of the creature, I saw other intelligent clusters attacking the behemoth. There were dozens of them, cutting the thing down one section at a time. The beast howled through a thousand mouths, but there was nothing it could do to defend itself. The thing would fall before it could take another human life.

Saviors

The creature slumped against the side of the hospital and bled out. The intelligent clusters pierced too many of its major blood vessels. It died slowly, twitching, some of its tentacles still wiggling.

Some of the survivors cheered at the death of the behemoth. Others were not ready to celebrate yet, even more fearful of the human-like clusters than they were the massive beast. There were far less people here than there were when we first arrived. A little less than twenty still lived. There were twice as many corpses lying about.

I went to the edge of the roof and looked down. The intelligent clusters were thorough. They climbed across the beast’s blobby corpse, killing every little creature that was conjoined to its back. They truly were our saviors. They weren’t the feral beasts I thought they were.

When I turned my attention toward the island of rubble on the side of the building, the place where Gary was shot, I noticed the large man’s body was no longer there. A trail of blood and sludge stretched across the rubble. I scanned the trail until I found him. He was still alive, trying to crawl to safety. He moved so slowly that he barely could make it one inch at a time.

“Gary!” I shouted down at him.

I went to the stairwell, entering the hospital to get to him.

On the stairs, I ran into the two men I met on the roof.

“Are you doctors?” I asked, while squeezing past them.

One of them nodded. “What’s the problem?”

“Come with me,” I said.

They followed me downstairs.

As we raced through the building, I said to myself, “Hold on, hold on, hold on.”

We passed cowering people in the hallways. Injured men and elderly women hid under tables and in doorways, still worried the roof was going to collapse on top of them

“Don’t worry,” I said to a nurse guarding a group of children. “It’s over.”

But they seemed more frightened by my presence than relieved by my words. Several people tried to stop the doctors as we ran, but they waved them off and went with me. I wasn’t sure why they brushed off their own people to help a total stranger, not even knowing what they were needed for, but they stuck by my side. It was as though they felt I had something to do with the intelligent clusters. As if they were crediting me for saving them from the behemoth and would do anything to repay me.

When I couldn’t find my way, I asked the doctors to lead me to the collapsed wing of the building. They didn’t hesitate for a second and took me where I needed to go. I lost North, Mike, and Porn Eyes. There was no way I could lose Gary as well. We were so close. We had to save him no matter what.

When we got to Gary, he was no longer crawling. He lay on his back, holding his gunshot wounds with three of his arms.

“Gary!” I cried, scrambling over the rubble to get to his side.

A smile spread across his split-face when he saw me. His eyes widened. He couldn’t believe I was still alive.

“Stork?” he asked.

I kneeled down to him.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “You’re going to live.”

I looked up at the doctors. When they saw it was a mutant they were there to help, the expressions sunk on their faces. But they didn’t refuse their services.

“He was shot,” I told the doctors. “Can you save him?”

The doctors went to him, examining his wounds.

“We need to get him inside,” one of them said.

They couldn’t tell if he was human or one of the intelligent clusters, but they planned to help him either way.

We lifted his hulking form and carried him into the hospital. Placing him in the closest operating room, one of the doctors went right to work as the other went for assistance.

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” the doctor said.

He pulled on rubber gloves and prepped for surgery using whatever he had at his disposal. With the hospital in its current shape, he wasn’t as prepared as he should have been. He warned me that it wasn’t going to be a smooth procedure.

“You don’t know his blood type do you?” the doctor asked.

I shook my head.

Gary said, “I didn’t check.”

Because he had recently joined, he didn’t remember what his new blood type was.

“It’s either O+ or B,” he said.

Those were the two blood types of the people he was before he combined. When joining, you usually end up with the blood of one of your two halves. Just as your blood type is often the same as one of your parents.

“That doesn’t help,” the doctor said. He looked at me. “What about you? We need type O blood.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what type I was either.

When the other doctor returned with nurses and equipment, he was asked to go find somebody with the right kind of blood.

“We’ll sort it out,” he said.

As the doctor proceeded to remove the bullets, I held Gary’s hand. He stared at me, smiling. He was still amazed to see me alive.

“I thought I saw you buy it out there,” he said.

He didn’t grunt or cringe at the pain as the doctors removed a bullet. Either he was tough enough to bear it or he no longer had feeling in that section of his body.

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m not that easy to kill.”

He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve noticed.”

As I watched him, I could tell he didn’t think he was going to make it. Even though we had him on the operating table, even though doctors were working furiously to save him, he resigned himself. He was just going to let it happen, just as Mike had given up after leaving the Wire District.

“It was good being alive,” he said. “Even in this mutated body, I was happy to have seen all that I saw. The world is such an interesting place.”

I pulled his eyes to face mine. His skin was soft and raw against my fingertips, the corrosive sludge had made his skin tender and pliable.

“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “You’re going to be fine.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t care about myself. I never did. The only reason I fought to live for so long was to save Gary. He was the only part of me that mattered.” He gulped and then snorted through one mucus-filled nostril. “You would have really liked him, I think. I wish you would’ve been able to meet him.”

I shook my head. “You have to hold on. For Gary’s sake. You said so yourself. You can’t let him die.”

He ignored what I said, looking past me.

“Gary would have loved the creatures out there,” he said. “Those were the things he loved best. He liked complexity. He liked looking at his fingerprints under a magnifying glass to study all of the pores and creases in his skin. He liked insects and biology. No matter how dangerous the clusters were, he would have wanted to get as close to them as he could and just admire their beauty.”

“But they would have killed him.”

Gary laughed. “Most likely, yes. But he wouldn’t have been afraid. It wasn’t in his nature to fear things he was attracted to. He wouldn’t have seen them as monsters. He would have seen them as works of art. Every single one of them an artistic masterpiece. Even with all the death and destruction around him, he would have been happy to see it all.”

I held his hand tighter.

“That was what I liked best about my memories of being him,” Gary continued. “Nothing was ugly to him. Nothing was depressing. Everything, even the things that repulsed or horrified other people, was beautiful to him. And the things that were beautiful to other people, he found absolutely breathtaking.”

Then a tear fell down his bulbous cheek.

He looked away from me, staring out of the window.

“I wish I could see the world through Gary’s eyes one more time,” he said in a choking voice. “Just one more time.” Tears poured down his face, mixing with dried blood and black residue. “Then I would be able to die with no regrets.”

I wiped his tears away. I tried to comfort him the best I could, but nothing I could say would help him. He was lost in his mind, trying to pull out memories from Gary’s past, memories of the world through the young man’s eyes.

“Can I talk to you?” one of the doctors asked me.

He took me out of the room, into the half-collapsed hallway.

“What is it?” I asked, though I knew by the sound of his voice that it wasn’t good news.

“We can’t remove the last bullet,” he said. “It’s lodged inside of his left heart.”

“Left heart? He had two hearts?”

The doctor nodded. “It’s not uncommon with mutants. The other heart is dead already. And the only heart he has left isn’t going to last. We can’t remove the bullet without killing him, and if we don’t remove it soon he’ll die.”

“Is there anything you can do?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Before he could go back inside, I stopped him.

“What about a bonding machine?” I asked.

I remember reading that many hospitals kept bonding machines on property in case of emergencies. If a patient couldn’t be saved through surgery he could be bonded with somebody onsite. But this was only common for important people. It required a volunteer to give up their own life to save the patient, which meant that only close family members were likely to agree. But if the person was famous or important enough, there were volunteers on call that would come in to give up their lives to combine with the patient. Some people were quick to join with somebody of worth.

“If it hasn’t been destroyed, we might still have a bonding machine upstairs,” he said. “I think there’s also a generator we can use to power it as long as nobody has already taken it.”

I nodded. “Let’s do that then.”

“But we’d need a volunteer,” he said. “Because of his condition, I don’t think anyone would agree. Not even the crippled or the elderly.”

By his condition, the doctor was referring to his deformities. And the doctor was right. Somebody like Gary was not the type anyone would join with to save. He was a mutant and a nobody. Most people would rather let him die.

“Can’t you ask around? There’s got to be somebody who was injured in the fight, who won’t be able to go on otherwise.”

The doctor nodded. “I’ll send the nurse to look for a volunteer, but I wouldn’t count on it. You should say your goodbyes now.”

I looked back into the room at the large man on the operating table. I couldn’t let him die. There had to be somebody who would join with him. With the city in this condition, the crippled, the injured, and the elderly couldn’t afford to be picky. They needed to be strong and fit if they hoped to survive the disaster.

But even as hopeful as I was, I knew it wasn’t likely. Most people would rather die human than live as a mutant.

When the nurse came back, I could tell by the look on her face that there were no takers. I held Gary’s hand tightly as she gave the doctor the bad news.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said.

But I wasn’t ready to give up on the big man. I hardly knew him, I wasn’t even sure I could call him a friend, but I couldn’t just let him die.

“I volunteer,” I said.

The doctor was shocked by my words. “Are you sure?”

I nodded at him. “If it’s the only way, I’ll do it.”

When Gary figured out what I was talking about, he shook his head at me. “You can’t.”

“I have to,” I said.

“But I don’t want this.” He looked at the doctor. “Don’t let her do this.”

The doctor said, “We can’t go through with the procedure unless both parties agree.”

“Even if he’s going to die?” I asked.

“We have to respect the patient’s wishes,” said the doctor. “If he’d rather die than join we have to honor that decision.”

I looked down at Gary. “Come on, you have to agree. Let me save your life.”

“I won’t let you sacrifice yourself to save me,” Gary said.

“I won’t be sacrificing myself,” I said. “We’ll live on as a new person.”

“But the results would still be the same. There would no longer be two of us. There would only be one. It would be better if I died.”

“What about Gary? You’re just going to let his memories die?”

“I’d rather they die than force you to become like me. You’re beautiful the way you are, Stork. I want you to stay that way. I don’t want to ugly you with my deformities.”

I looked at the doctor. “Take him to the bonding machine.”

The doctor almost laughed at my forcefulness. “If he doesn’t agree there’s nothing we can do.”

“Just take him up there,” I said. “I’ll convince him along the way.”

They looked at each other, hesitating.

“If he still refuses he can die up there,” I said. “But I don’t want to waste another minute arguing with him. By the time he agrees, I want him ready to get into the machine.”

The doctors were reluctant, but they permitted it. They wheeled him out of the room and took him up to the second floor. Chunks of ceiling rubble covered the tops of the bonding chambers, a crack down the center of the room, but other than that the machines appeared operational. There was a generator still in the room. It was small, but contained enough power for one bonding chamber.

The doctors put Gary inside the machine, but then got between us. They wouldn’t let me do it without his consent.

Talking over the doctor’s shoulder, I said, “Please, Gary. Let me do this.”

“You don’t know what it’s like to exist as I do. It’s a living death. Nobody would ever treat you like a human being for the rest of your life.”

I pointed at my bugging alien eyes. “I’m already a freak.”

“It would be worse. Much, much worse.”

I tried to get past the doctors to him, but they held me back. “You don’t know for sure. We could come out normal. You could be free of your deformities.”

He shook his head. “It’s impossible. I’ve tried so many times before. There’s no cure.”

The doctors pushed me away.

“Let it go,” one of them said. “He doesn’t want to do it. Respect his wishes.”

Tears oozed from my bugging eyes. I couldn’t tell why I was crying. I had no idea if I really cared that much for Gary, but I cried as though my dearest loved one was going to die.

“Please, Gary,” I told him, staring him in the eyes. “Let me join with you.”

Before he could say anything, I burst through the doctors and went to his side. I kneeled down beside the chamber.

“It’s not for you,” I told him. “It’s for me. I can’t live knowing I let you die. We lost everyone. I’ve lost everyone. I need you to survive. I won’t have the strength to go on without you.”

I brought the machete to my throat.

“If we don’t join I’ll die right here next to you,” I said.

Gary placed his hand around the blade, gripping it with his palm until he bled. I refused to take it away.

“You hardly know me,” he said.

I didn’t know why, but I exploded at him. With tears flowing from my eyes, I screamed, “I hardly know anyone.”

Then I dropped the machete.

“That’s the thing. I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know who my family is. I don’t know if I have friends. I don’t even know what I’m like as a person. I don’t know what my interests are. I don’t know what food I like to eat. I’m lost in all of these people in my head. The only thing in this world that I recognize is you. Just you. Maybe deep down I don’t really care about what happens to you. Maybe it’s just selfishness. Maybe it’s just about what happens to me. Without you, I won’t know who I am. The only memories I have in this body are those I’ve built with you, trying to survive through this disaster. That’s all I know about me. My memories of the past several days are the only things that make me who I am. I need them. I need you.”

Gary closed his eyes and then nodded his head.

He looked at me and said, “Then I guess there’s only one thing to do…”

A smile grew on his face, staring at me with his crooked eyes. He sat up and put his hands on my shoulder. Tears flowed down my cheeks, dripping onto his shirtless half-melted chest, as he embraced me tightly with his upper arms.

“You’ll have to make new memories,” he said.

With his lower set of arms, he grabbed the machete off of the ground. Then he pushed me away from him and drove the blade up through his neck, into his skull.

I screamed as the blood sprayed out of his throat. The doctors scrambled to help Gary, but there was nothing to do but brace him as his life slipped away.

“No…” I cried. “NO!”

I couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t die on me. I pulled the doctors away from him and jumped inside of the bonding machine. There wasn’t time to bond with him. I couldn’t figure out what to do.

“You can’t die!” I screamed. “You have to join with me. You have to!”

Not sure what else to do, I pulled the machete out of his neck and wrapped my lips around his wound. Then I drank his blood. The doctors screamed at the sight of it, horrified by what I was doing. Before they could get me away from him, I closed the lid of the bonding chamber and continued sucking on the mutant’s neck. As his warm blood splashed down my throat, I imagined that it was his soul entering me.

He was not going to die. He was going to join with me. I sucked every drop from his throat until the bleeding stopped. And then I felt it. I could feel Gary filling my body, becoming one with me. I wouldn’t be alone. I would be with him.

I was no longer Stork. I was somebody new. A cross between Stork and Gary. When the doctors opened the machine and pulled me off of the mutant’s corpse, I looked around the room and saw things in a new and different way. Everything was so beautiful. Everything had complexity of color and texture.

A smile exploded from my face. I laughed in a high-pitched voice.

As the doctors carried me out of the room, trying to calm me down, I examined the world through Gary’s eyes. It was wondrous. Every little gruesome bit of it. I couldn’t stop looking at all the intricate details of the hallway, every pore in the doctor’s skin as he wiped away the blood covering my chin and chest.

Although I had no memories of Gary’s past, I still felt him inside of me. And knowing that kept me going. It kept me alive.

PART SIX

HELIX

New Man

It’s been fifty years and twenty joinings since Gary died. I’m now a man named Helix. I live in a large apartment high above the city—if you can still call it a city. The world is a much different place these days. Not just here, but everywhere. Nothing has been the same since that night the Wire District flooded.

From time to time, I like to go out on the rooftop and stare across the cityscape, remembering what things were like before. Things were slower then. More difficult. It was a more exciting time to live.

I was only Stork for a few weeks of my life, but it still seems like one of the longest lives I’ve ever lived. She went through so much before and after the event at the hospital. It was a very trying time. Not just for me, but for all of humanity. What I didn’t realize at the time was that what was happening to the city was happening everywhere. Every major population center in the world was flooded with the black sludge. It did start in the Wire District. That was the first place the disaster struck. But it spread from bond hotel to bond hotel, changing the face of the entire world.

That day that Gary died, I convinced myself that we were combined into the same person. This went on for several hours before I snapped out of it. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I was far more terrified than I realized at the time. The stress and anxiety must have gotten the better of me. After going through so much, I just couldn’t take it anymore. Gary’s death was the thing that pushed me over the edge. It was all very silly. I couldn’t believe how fragile I was, even for a newborn.

That’s something new about the world these days. We’ve realized that the recently joined should not be treated as full-grown adults. Even though they have the memories of their past lives, they are essentially newborns. They don’t really have a good understanding of who they are.

These days, if I told anyone about what I had to endure while I was Stork, a mere infant, they would be shocked. They wouldn’t be able to comprehend how such horrible things could happen to such an innocent child.

After Gary’s death, it was a few hours before I met up with Hydra again. I started to regain my senses by then, started to doubt that I’d actually joined with Gary by drinking his blood.

She was on the roof with a group of the other intelligent clusters. They were speaking to the human survivors. The humans were frightened, holding weapons tightly in their hands, not sure what to make of the strange cluster people. But they understood the creatures were there to help them. They did not dare fire a shot at their saviors.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Hydra said.

I nodded, but didn’t mention that there was still a part of me that thought I saved Gary. I didn’t want her to think I was crazy.

“What you said back there…” I began. “About you being Hydra. Was it true?”

Hydra looked at me. Peering deep into her eyes, I could tell it was true. I could see myself inside of her. Sammy Smyth and Jupiter Minneau were staring back at me.

“Yes.” She blinked at me with her familiar hazel eyes.

“But…”

“You’re confused,” she said. “I understand. Come with me.”

I followed the towering women across the rooftop. She took me to the edge of the roof, far away from the massive corpse rotting against the side of the building.

“How is it possible?” I asked, as we stared across the ocean of sludge.

“I’m not completely sure,” she said. “The last thing I remember was entering the bonding machine as Sammy and Jupiter. Then I woke inside a blanket of warm blackness. All I knew was that I was Hydra. I didn’t know there was another Hydra. I didn’t know what I was yet.”

“So when I was born as Hydra you were created at the same time?”

She nodded. “I believe so. We are a bit like clones of each other. All of your memories are also my memories.”

“Except I’m not just Hydra. I’m also Pixie. I have more memories now.”

She nodded. “And I’m not just Hydra, myself. In fact, I have the memories of all the people who ever joined in that bond hotel. There are thousands of people in my head. It took a few days for me to realize just how many people made up my psyche. At first, I was just Sammy and Jupiter. But then more personas joined my memory, a few at a time. Even your friend, Gary. His memories are also mine.”

My eyes lit up. “You’re also Gary? You have all his memories?”

“Yes. I remember everything about him and his components before his bonding.”

I smiled and looked away. It was good to know Gary lived on through someone else. Drinking his blood was not necessary. He was part of Hydra now.

“So is that why you helped us?” I asked. “Because we were the same person?”

She nodded. “The Sammy part of me couldn’t let anyone die. I had to do everything I could to save as many people as possible.”

“What about Mike?” I asked. “I saw you bite into him. You took him out of the window like a piece of food.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t eating him. I bit off a piece of gangrenous flesh. I was trying to save his life. He would have died if I didn’t take him.”

“What happened to him? Is he still alive?”

She smiled. “Mike? He’s a little different now.”

“Different how?”

She looked back at the crowd of clusters and pointed at one of them. A male cluster saw us and waved back. “He’s right there.”

The male cluster approached us.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I couldn’t save him through medical means, even though I have the memories of hundreds of doctors. The only thing I could do was bond him with one of my people. He lives on as a New Man named Silvis.”

“New Man?” I asked.

“That’s what we call ourselves,” she said.

It seemed kind of strange to me how the intelligent clusters referred to themselves as New Humans. They didn’t see themselves as mutants. They saw themselves as a whole new species.

“Stork?” Silvis called out to me, as he came closer to us. “It’s good to see you alive.”

When the New Man arrived, I could see it in his eyes. He had four arms and an overly large cranium, but it was definitely Mike. The asshole survived.

“I thought you were dead,” I said.

Then I couldn’t help myself. I followed the urge to wrap my arms around him and hug his massive new form against my face. It wasn’t just me who survived. Mike made it, too. I was able to forget all about Gary at that point. I didn’t need to pretend he was a part of me. I still had Mike.

“I was worried about you, too,” he said, breaking my grip on him and backing away. “I’m happy you were spared.”

He didn’t seem too interested in hearing about what happened to me since we separated. He just nodded his gray head and told me, “Take care of yourself, Stork.”

Then he walked away, rejoining the other New Men. I was happy Mike was still alive in one form or another, but I realized he wasn’t the same man I suffered with. This Silvis had his own people now, his own plans for the future. He wasn’t human. He was New Human. Our paths would not cross again.

I scanned the crowd of New Humans as they worked together, assisting the injured humans, doing what they could to repair the hospital.

“This is going to be the center of our operations,” Hydra said. “We plan to rebuild the city, bring the chaos back to order. And it all starts here.”

“What about us?” I asked. “Do you want our help? Or should we wait until rescue arrives?”

“You can help us if you want, but there is no rescue arriving. We’re the closest you’re going to get.”

“Why do you say that?”

“This isn’t just happening here. The flood has hit every city in the world. Every city that has bond hotels, which is most of them. Nobody will be rescued because there’s nobody left to rescue you.”

It was a horrific thought that I didn’t want to believe, but if it were true then it would explain a lot. Why there were no radio broadcasts, why evacuation procedures suddenly ended while many people were still in the city, why the bombs never dropped, why we were abandoned to fend for ourselves.

“How do you know this?” I asked.

Hydra sighed. “There are other New Humans out there, ones who don’t think like the rest of us. They don’t want to save humanity. They want to destroy it.”

I thought back to the two intelligent clusters Hydra had met on the roof the night before. They seemed to be at odds with each other. I wondered if they were the human-hating clusters she was talking about.

“You see,” she continued. “We were created with the consciousness of thousands upon thousands of humans. We each have more knowledge than an entire city full of humans, all of us with a thousand centuries of living experience. Compared to New Humans, your people are primitive, mere insects among us. Some of us feel that you are like children that should be protected. But others think you should be wiped out, exterminated to make way for a superior species. These latter types are the New Men who spread the floods from the Wire District to the rest of the city. They tampered with the bond hotels’ controls to recreate the same conditions that caused the first disaster. After all the hotels in the city flooded the streets, they went to the next city. Then the next city. Building an army of clusters and New Men as they went.”

“How do you know they succeeded? Can they be stopped?”

She shook her head. “It’s too late to stop it. There’s not a city left in this country that hasn’t already been affected by the flood. By the end of the week, the rest of the world will be covered as well.”

“What about all the clusters that will be created? For every one of you, there are hundreds of those monstrous creatures. What will you do about them?”

“They will have to be killed,” she said. “They are a danger to New Men as well as humans. Some might be saved, but not many. We plan to drain the streets of fluid so that they’ll have nowhere to hide. Then we’ll exterminate all which pose a threat. The gentle ones, if there are many gentle ones, will be released in the wild or cared for in homes, depending on whether or not they can get by on their own.”

I looked out at the ocean of blackness. Clusters slithered through the waters. There were so many of them. I couldn’t imagine all that it would take to accomplish such a task. They were horrific monsters and I agreed they should be wiped out, but a part of me felt sorry for them. They deserved life as much as any other being, whether they were abominations or not.

But then again, perhaps it was merciful to put them out of their misery. It must have been a living hell to live as a cluster.

The infant in Hydra’s belly wiggled and rolled. Fluids pumped beneath its translucent skin.

“Are you pregnant or is that a small conjoined twin?” I asked. Then I realized I was being too forward and added, “Sorry, I was just curious.”

But Hydra was not offended. There did not seem like much could offend her. She was too intelligent for such primitive feelings.

“It is our child,” she said, touching the fetus inside of her open womb.

“Our child?”

“Yours and mine,” she explained. “Or, to be more precise, Sammy and Jupiter’s.”

I curled my hands against the concrete edge of the roof, shocked and confused by her statement.

“What?” I asked. “How?

She caressed the fetus in her womb, calming it back to sleep.

“When we joined, Sammy and Jupiter made love in the bonding machine. Jupiter’s eggs were fertilized before they dissolved. The egg was flushed with the rest of their waste and ended up inside of me while I was being formed underground in the black waste. It’s actually not uncommon among female New Men. We are often born pregnant.”

“So it’s just a normal human baby?” I asked.

Hydra nodded. “He grew quickly inside of me. New Human fetuses gestate at a far faster rate than those of normal humans. Our son will likely be born sometime tomorrow.”

I looked at the purring infant in her abdomen. I couldn’t believe Sammy and Jupiter had a child. Part of me felt as though it was mine, staring longingly at the baby boy like he was my son in another woman’s womb. But I knew better than to think I would have anything to do with its future. He was Hydra’s child. Although he shared my DNA, he was not a part of me.

“Will he have the memories of Jupiter and Sammy?” I asked.

Hydra shook her head. “No, he’ll be fresh. A new life. He won’t be like me or my people. He will be raised as a regular human.”

I nodded at her, wondering if she would raise her child as a normal boy. I couldn’t imagine what she would be like for a mother. Nor could I imagine what it would be like for her son, being raised by a ten foot tall monster with razor-sharp claws.

I talked with Hydra all afternoon and for many days afterward. Although she was a New Human, I found her easy to talk to. I think she felt the same way. It was probably because we shared many of the same memories. At our core, we were the same person. Although she was thousands of different people, she was also Jupiter, Sammy, Pixie, and Gary combined. Everything that made me was also a part of her. We were sisters. Closer than sisters. Twins. But she was obviously the older of us, the mature sister. Only instead of a few years of extra experience, she had thousands of lifetimes.

One night, just before dark, we went to the top of the highest high rise and watched the sunset. She brought her child with her, holding the infant in her arms, cradling him gently. Despite her foot-long razor-sharp talons, she touched the baby with such precision and delicacy that she never even left a single scratch on the infant’s tender skin.

“Does it feel strange having so many people in you?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she hung her long white legs off the edge of the building.

“You’re a combination of thousands of people. What is it like? Do you feel like one? Or do you feel like many?”

Hydra didn’t answer my question right away. Yellow, which was the name of our baby due to the yellow-colored birthmark on its forehead, began crying and gurgling at his mother. With her index talon, Hydra lifted the insect-like plate covering her breast. The plate lifted, exposing a soft mucus-covered breast beneath. She pulled the infant through the warm strands of phlegm and pressed it to the puffy gray wrinkled nipple. She lowered the breast’s plate over Yellow’s head as he drank, protecting him from the elements.

“I feel like one person,” she said. “It’s just I feel like I’ve lived for a very long time. An adult human of forty years would have lived eight times as much as a child of five, but the human does not feel like she’s eight different five-year-olds. She just has more memories.”

I nodded. I guess I understood. Like her, I was a combination of many people but I only felt like me. Just because she was a mixture of far more people, it wouldn’t be any different.

“What do you think it would be like if everyone in the entire world combined into one person?” I asked.

She thought it was a funny question. It seemed weird to hear Hydra laugh, but she snickered at me. Perhaps it wasn’t my question, but Yellow tickling her nipple beneath her breast’s plated shell.

“Like if everyone went into a bonding machine at once?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Hmmm…” she said. “That reminds me of something I thought of recently.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s just a theory, but I was wondering about what happens to us after we die.”

“You’re not an atheist?” I asked.

With all of her intellect, I couldn’t imagine her being anything but an atheist.

“I don’t believe in God, exactly,” she said. “At least not in the Christian sense. I believe we are all God.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Do you mean God is in all of us?”

“Not exactly. I believe that all of us were created for one reason, and that was so that God could evolve. I believe that when we are born, our souls come from a greater whole. We are all part of the same being. But he splits us up, puts us in other life forms, like blank sheets of paper in an artist’s sketchbook. Then we’re free to live our lives, learning as much as possible along the way, experiencing all that life has to offer.”

“And that’s how God evolves?”

She nodded. “After we die, our souls melt together with the being that we came from. Our memories become its memories. Our souls become one with every living thing that came before us. And this process is repeated time and time again, to gain as many memories as possible. This being could be God or it could just be some great formless creature beyond our universe.”

“So you think God is just a massive cluster? A combination of memories from every single life form that has ever existed on this planet?”

She nodded. “It’s just a thought. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I like to believe it.”

Part of me thought somebody with thousands of lives worth of experiences would have a more definite explanation for the meaning of life, but I guessed that her theory was as good as any. After thousands of years of civilization, humanity wasn’t any closer to figuring it all out. It was foolish to believe that even a New Human could come up with anything better.

“Like the two of us…” I said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“We were both born Hydra Hyuna. We came from the same pieces. But then we went in separate directions. We had different experiences. We learned things that the other didn’t know. If say in fifty years’ time we combined back together, we would become greater than we originally started. We would have evolved.”

Hydra nodded. “Exactly.”

She lifted up her breastplate with a talon and stared down at Yellow. Because she was such a large creature, her breast was the size of the entire infant. She pushed the baby up with the bottom of her palm and allowed it to curl up around her breast, suckling the nipple that was nearly too big for its mouth. When Yellow was coiled up into a ball, Hydra lowered the breast plate down, holding the baby safely within. Then she was able to move both of her arms freely.

“Let’s do that,” she said.

I looked at her with a questioning face. I wasn’t sure what she meant.

She said, “In fifty years’ time, if we’re both still alive, let’s meet up. We can melt together into one person, so that we can learn all of the different experiences we each went through since we split into two people.”

I laughed. It seemed like an absurd plan, but a part of me liked the idea.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s a deal. In fifty years, we’ll become one again. Just like your theory of our afterlife.”

She nodded. As the sun disappeared in the sky and the stars came out, we watched the lights of the city turn on. There were hundreds of lit windows in the buildings all around us, where survivors and New Humans worked together to restore civilization. Although it was dark, very few clusters could be heard coming out of the black sludge below. So many of them had been eliminated or removed. It wouldn’t be long until the entire city was free of the feral creatures.

A couple weeks after I had the talk with Hydra, we lost contact with each other. I joined with a New Human named Eldrich. In this new world, I thought it would be best to become one of the intelligent clusters. I didn’t want to be left behind with the other humans that refused to join. They would never be fully accepted into the new society. Like children that needed to be protected, they would never have the same rights as New Men. Those who wanted to have a future had to join. Those who were stubborn or scared were left behind.

I joined many times after that, mostly with other humans who wanted to make something of themselves. I joined with only a couple of other New Humans. But I never forgot about my deal with Hydra. No matter how many people I became, I always remembered my other half, always wondered what she did with her life, knowing that someday we would be one again.

Reunion

I can’t wait to melt.

Right now, I’m on the roof of the same building where Hydra and I made that deal fifty years ago. Today is the day we finally meet again. Today is the day we melt.

Looking out across the city, so much has changed in the past fifty years. New Human Society has come so far. Every year, technology has advanced a hundred times faster than it would in the hands of the old humans. The city is barely recognizable. Vessels that blink in and out of space flutter through the streets like electricity through a power line. Buildings float across the sky above me, their windows shining lights in colors that old human eyes would never have been able to process. Holographic images are inserted into my head in a series of constant flashes, injecting my mind with nonstop information. In the world of today, I never stop learning. My subconscious is a sponge for knowledge. I even learn in my sleep.

I take a deep breath of the night air. The atmosphere is so clean and free of pollution now that you can see for miles. Hydra is on her way to my place. She’s bringing the bonding machine with her. These days, bonding machines are small handheld devices that anyone can carry around with them wherever they want to bond. It’s much more pleasant being able to melt in the comfort of your own home.

We’re to meet on the roof. Since I recently moved into this apartment building— choosing this exact place in anticipation of our meeting—we figured meeting on the roof would be the most suitable place for our joining.

I tap the controls of the modifier on my wrist, changing my clothes from casual attire to a fancy purple suit. With our thick skin, New Humans have no use for clothing other than decoration. So instead of wearing the fabrics of old, we have holo-suits that can be altered in style with the push of a button. The purple suit is the one I chose for the evening, but I have hundreds of thousands of clothing options to choose from. You never have to wear the same clothes twice. You never have to do laundry.

I use my body modifier to change other settings. I switch my odor setting to orange blossom, my favorite body scent. I change my facial hair setting to clean cut. And I change my makeup setting to dark and subtle. New Human males use makeup just as much as females these days, but I prefer to keep it light. Some guys like to be bright and flashy with their makeup, but I’m still a bit conservative in that respect.

Hydra arrives before I’m able to raise the height of my shoe heels, so I decide to leave it at only one inch. She was so much taller than me when we last saw each other, I didn’t want to appear shorter than her this time.

“Stork?” she asks with a smile on her wide red lips.

I never would have recognized her if I didn’t already know it was her. She’s absolutely beautiful. A New Human woman in her late twenties, now standing eleven feet off the ground, even taller than she was before, several inches taller than me. Her talons are clipped thin and pointed, patterned with pink holo-polish. A common style among most New Man females these days.

“Actually, it’s Helix now,” I say.

She comes toward me in her bright red holo-dress. Her scent is that of green tea, the intensity turned up so high that I could smell it from across the roof.

“I don’t want to know anything about you until after we melt,” she says. “For now, you are still Stork. I am still Hydra.”

I nod my head and smile. “Very well.”

I’m enjoying how we’re communicating in old speak. These days, people rarely use old speak unless they’re speaking to children or regular humans. New Humans have a new tongue. It is a language that is so efficient that we can communicate thousands of words of dialog in just a few syllables. But there’s something romantic about communicating in old speak. It’s inefficient, but it’s beautiful and comforting in its own way. Something about the art of conversation was lost when we switched to new tongue.

“Shall we begin?” she asks.

A familiar twinkle radiates from her eyes at me. I can tell it’s the part of me inside of her, the part that can’t wait to rejoin itself.

“I’d love to.” I smile back at her. “I’ve been dying with anticipation for the past fifty years. I don’t think I can wait another minute.”

She sets the device at our feet.

“Let’s see where our paths took us,” she says.

We turn off our holo-clothes and remove our body modifiers, placing them on the ground nearby. Then we step forward and wrap our arms around each other, staring deeply into each other’s eyes.

“I bet I won,” I say.

She shakes her head. “It wasn’t a contest.”

I smile. “There was no way I was going to live my life without doing more than you did.”

She laughs. “I invented Auto-Meat. Beat that.”

I laugh back. “I opened an amusement park orbiting Saturn.”

We giggle with each other like little children the night before Christmas.

“Stop,” she says. “We’re ruining the surprise.”

I nod. “Very well.”

As the bonding device whirs to life, my insides turn warm and fizzy. She stares at me, the anticipation pulsing behind her eyes.

I lean in and kiss her on the mouth, feeling the texture of her lips against mine.

She pulls back and asks, “What was that for?”

I look her in the eyes and say, “I just wanted to see what it would feel like to kiss me.”

By the look in her eyes, I can tell she recalls the memory of when we bonded as Jupiter and Sammy, when we kissed before bonding.

She laughs and wraps herself around me, kissing my lips and neck as our flesh becomes the texture of putty. We give ourselves over to each other, melting into one form. When our minds become whole again, it feels like returning home after a long trip. It’s like dying and rejoining the collective mind, remembering every experience that has ever been experienced since the beginning of time.

The process only lasts a moment, but it’s the most beautiful moment that I’ve ever felt in all of my lives.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carlton Mellick III is one of the leading authors of the bizarro fiction subgenre. Since 2001, his books have drawn an international cult following, despite the fact that they have been shunned by most libraries and chain bookstores.

He won the Wonderland Book Award for his novel, Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, in 2009. His short fiction has appeared in Vice Magazine, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #16, The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, and Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead, among others. He is also a graduate of Clarion West, where he studied under the likes of Chuck Palahniuk, Connie Willis, and Cory Doctorow.

He lives in Portland, OR, the bizarro fiction mecca.

Visit him online at www.carltonmellick.com

Table of Contents

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

PART FIVE

PART SIX